Most narratologists today maintain that all fictional narratives have a fictional narrator that is to be distinguished from its author. Call this a “pan-narrator theory” (PN). In this essay, we argue that there are good reasons against this position, while important arguments that seem to speak in favor of it can be shown to be ultimately untenable. We start by offering a brief sketch of a theory of fiction that serves as the basis of our considerations and then defend the view that there is no need, theoretical or pragmatic, to postulate a fictional narrator for every fictional narrative.
In this article, we shall contribute to the theory of narrative closure. In pre-theoretical terms, a narrative features closure if it has an ending. We start by giving a general introduction into the closure phenomenon. Next, we offer a reconstruction of Noël Carroll’s (2007. Narrative closure
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