What is a Narrator?: Narrator Theory and Medieval Narratives

This article questions the “narrator theory of narration” with particular reference to medieval narratives, often retellings of existing stories, and generally neglected by current theory. Part I analyzes the concept of the internal, potentially unreliable narrator, widely regarded as a narratological necessity. Part II examines the history of the term narrator. Part III studies the theories of narration implied by scribal annotations in some medieval manuscripts. Parts IV, V, and VI discuss three medieval cases—Malory’s Morte Darthur, Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale and the anonymous Pearl—in which application of the narrator theory proves to be misleading.