Over the last two decades, interest in and research on the topic of motion-picture music – the music that is part of films, television shows, and so on – has expanded dramatically. However, there has been little attention to the philosophy of motion-picture music in the analytic tradition. Nevertheless, two problems have begun to coalesce. They are:
This chapter will review the debates surrounding these problems.
Jeff Smith raises the question of the “ontology” of film music in an article on film music and philosophy, stating an Aristotelian desire to establish “first principles” for the study of the philosophy of film music (Smith 2009: 189). The question “What is motion-picture music?” suggests two readings. The first is an ontological question about the nature of film music, or what kind of thing it is. The second is the classificatory question of which or what things should be counted as film music. Smith writes in terms of ontology, but his project is best construed as a classificatory project. We pursue this latter question, and do not assume that film music forms a unique ontological kind.
The main thrust of Smith’s discussion is a critique of William Rosar’s article “Film Music – What’s in a Name?” (2002), which strikes down Rosar’s essentialist definition of film music. Rosar identifies film music as original music composed in a particular style for a particular film; for example, Max Steiner’s score for Gone With the Wind. While an essentialist definition of this sort might be useful to a musicologist studying, for example, the influence of Hollywood scores on twentieth-century musical composition, a philosopher who needs a classification identifying all and only film music in order to address further philosophical problems of film music will find such a definition too restrictive. Smith offers instead a “cluster account” of film music, which “serves to identify several possible criteria for classification” (2009: 189).
Specifically, Smith offers the following criteria as contributing toward something’s counting as film music:
(1) music specially composed for use as part of a recorded audio-visual medium; (2) music used to accompany cinematic depictions of peoples, places, things, ideas, or events; (3) music used to underline aspects of a film’s setting; (4) music used to communicate a film character’s traits; (5) music used to signify emotion or mood in a filmed scene or sequence; (6) music used to convey a film character’s point of view; (7) music used to accent depicted actions in a filmed scene or sequence; (8) music used to reinforce a film’s formal features, such as its editing; and (9) music that sounds like film music.
(2009: 190)
Most of these items (2–8) identify film music in terms of the role a score or musical cue serves within the larger context of the film. It is not important whether the music is originally composed for the film, or is selected or re-orchestrated from pre-existing music. It is not important whether the music is in a Romantic or popular style. Nor is it important whether the music is diegetic, that is, occurring within the world of the filmic narrative, or non-diegetic, occurring outside the fictional world. Both are equally film music, and the differences between them are analyzed according to their function within the film. The first condition covers music composed for the purpose of inclusion in a film, even if the film director ultimately decides not to use the music for its intended purpose. This means, for instance, that Alex North’s original score to 2001: A Space Odyssey is film music, even though Kubrick decided to use pre-existing music in the final cut.
While Smith is offering a cluster account of film music, not a functional definition, many of the conditions that comprise the cluster identify artistic functions music plays in films, and as a result the definition is both redundant and incomplete. It is redundant in that music that serves any of these functions can be thought of as “modifying music” (Carroll 1988: 213–25), that is, music that comments on, or shapes the viewer’s perception of, elements or events of the narrative. It is incomplete because there are likely to be possible uses of music in film that have yet to be discovered.
Another problem with Smith’s cluster account is that satisfying Smith’s ninth criterion does not count toward something being film music. According to Berys
Gaut’s “‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept,” which Smith invokes as his model, “a criterion is simply to be understood as a property possession of which counts as a matter of conceptual necessity toward an object’s falling under a concept” (2000: 26). It is hard to see how sounding like film music would count toward a piece of music being film music as a matter of conceptual necessity. If, as Rosar suggests, portions of Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler were called film music because they sounded like film music, then, according to Smith, this counts toward Mathis der Maler’s actually being film music. Similarly, by now, after so many exorcism movies, the Dies Irae sounds like film music, but it is no more film music now than it was before the invention of motion pictures. This condition also initiates an unwanted regress. If other works by Hindemith sound like Mathis der Maler, they sound like film music, and so might be counted as film music. Smith claims that none of his criteria is necessary or sufficient for a thing counting as film music, but without some antecedent knowledge of which things are film music, there is no principled reason that satisfying any criterion or subset of criteria is not sufficient for being film music.
Instead, we offer the following analysis:
x is motion-picture music if:
1. x is a piece of music composed for use in a movie (e.g. Steiner’s scores to King Kong and Casablanca, and Bernard Herrmann’s score to Psycho, but also North’s compositions intended to be included in 2001: A Space Odyssey),
or
2. x is an arrangement or re-orchestration of existing music made specifically for inclusion in or accompaniment to a movie (e.g. Johnny Green’s arrangement of Gershwin’s American in Paris for Vincente Minnelli’s film with the same title),
or
3. x is a recording of pre-existing music appearing in a movie (e.g. numerous instances of popular songs used diegetically or non-diegetically in films such as Pulp Fiction).
If it is music in a movie, it is motion-picture music. This account includes everything that Rosar and Smith include in their accounts, but is sufficiently general that any future use movie-makers discover for music will automatically fall under it.
What exactly is the purpose of this analysis? Does this account identify objects metaphysically distinct from all other things? There is a reason to think that this could not be the case. On this account, every piece of non-original music that is used in a movie automatically becomes motion-picture music. Thus, Barber’s Adagio for Strings became a particularly well-known case of motion-picture music when it was used in Oliver Stone’s Platoon. When high-school orchestras around the country perform this piece, are they now performing motion-picture music? In a trivial sense, yes. But the vast majority of previously composed music that is used in a film retains whatever status it had prior to its inclusion. It is a notoriously difficult task to correctly state what sort of ontological thing a work of music is, but it seems that the Barber Adagio is still a piece of concert music, whatever that is, even if it also becomes motion-picture music. Are we forced to say that musical works used in films take on multiple ontological identities, or that there are now two Barber Adagios, the motion-picture music and the concert piece? These questions seem motivated by the need for theoretical precision, and not by a serious problem in ontology. To avoid the unwanted consequence of large quantities of music retroactively turning into motion-picture music, the account on offer specifies that the token of the musical type in the movie is motion-picture music, when it is in the movie. Because a movie soundtrack includes a particular musical performance, it is this performed token used with the movie that becomes motion-picture music. But other tokens of a piece and the type itself – even other instances of the particular recording – remain unaffected.
This definition is meant to be deflationary: any and all music appearing in (or intended to appear in) a movie is motion-picture music. We have not learned anything interesting about motion-picture music from this definition, other than what the extension of the term is. The more interesting philosophical questions involving motion-picture music involve exactly how it functions in the film, and we will now turn to one of these.
This next issue is embedded in a larger discussion about whether motion pictures have implicit fictional narrators, or as Jerrold Levinson prefers to label them, implicit fictional presenters (Levinson 1996).
What is an implicit fictional presenter? The easiest way to get a handle upon this term is to contrast the implicit fictional presenter with the explicit fictional presenter. In the newsreel segment of Citizen Kane, the breathless voice-over commentary that accompanies footage of the life of Charles Foster Kane is an example of explicit fictional narration. The speaker is a narrator because he tells us the story of Kane’s life and he is fictional because he is a character in the fiction. Presumably, other characters, such as Bernstein, could interact with him.
However, there are also explicit fictional narrators in movies with whom the other fictional characters cannot interact. For example, the voice-over commentary by Orson Welles in The Magnificent Ambersons is not and could not be heard by the fictional inhabitants of the storyworld; yet Welles qua narrator is nevertheless a fictional being, rather than a flesh and blood person, and it is his role to narrate the fiction. These fictional beings are explicit, since we can hear them loud and clear, and we have no need to infer their presence in the film. An implicit fictional narrator, on the other hand, is one whose narrating activity we need to posit in order to explain something.
Putatively, we need to posit this fictional entity because every narrative has a narrator. Of course, the requirement that narratives possess narrators does not automatically get us implicit fictional narrators, even in cases where the story lacks an explicit fictional narrator. Why? Because there are other candidates who might fulfill the required role of narrator. The first is the actual filmmaker (or filmmakers), the person(s) who made the movie and was paid by the studio.
And if it is not the actual filmmaker, then perhaps the narrator is the implied filmmaker – that is, the filmmaker as she manifests herself in the motion picture. The implied filmmaker may, in fact, share all of her beliefs, desires, attitudes, allegiances, and so forth with the actual filmmaker, but it is also possible that she may not. The actual filmmaker may be a pessimist, yet since she is making a romantic comedy, she needs to adopt the perspective of an optimist. In other words, the implied filmmaker is how the actual filmmaker strikes us on the basis of the way in which she has shaped the motion picture in terms of its tone, its structures, its emphases, ellipses, etc. The implied filmmaker is the agency to whom we assign responsibility for the way in which the fiction is constructed. So if narratives require narrators and if the actual filmmaker is not available for the role, might not the implied filmmaker be up to the task?
The defender of implicit fictional narration denies that either the actual filmmaker or the implied filmmaker can function as the narrator of a fictional story. Why?
To begin with the actual filmmaker, she lives, so to speak, on the wrong side of the fiction operator. The filmmaker makes it true in the movie version of Pride and Prejudice that Darcy slights Elizabeth at the ball. She does this by mandating us to imagine that Darcy slights Elizabeth at the ball. It is true in the fiction that Darcy slights Elizabeth and yet it cannot be the actual filmmaker who is telling us that it is true that Darcy slights Elizabeth, since the actual filmmaker does not believe this insofar as she does not believe that Darcy or Elizabeth exist.
However, if there is no explicit fictional narrator reporting this state of affairs, who is? Remember that supposedly someone has to be telling us what is true in the storyworld, since narratives require narrators and assertions require assertors. So, there must be some narrative agency (aka the implicit fictional narrator) who is asserting thus and so inside the fiction, since only narrators inside the fiction are positioned metaphysically in such a way to assert thus and so from thence.
A parallel argument can be leveled at the idea that the implied filmmaker is the relevant narrator. The implied filmmaker is responsible for the way in which the fiction is qua movie fiction. The implied filmmaker is, we may say, the teller or presenter of the fiction. But it is being reported to us from within the fictional world that Darcy slighted Elizabeth. Yet if there is no explicit fictional narrator to report this truth to us from within the fiction and the implied narrator is blocked from asserting that “Darcy slights Elizabeth” for the same reason that the actual author is blocked as the possible narrating source, then we are once again left with the question of identifying the narrative agency, since narratives require narrators. So, it is urged that we must posit an implicit fictional storyteller as the pertinent narrative agency.
Of course, motion pictures narrate not only by means of words, but also by images, both visual and aural. The motion picture tells us its story by presenting us with a succession of images. In Strangers on a Train, first we see a man, Bruno, stretching his arm to retrieve a cigarette lighter from a sewer. Next we see a tennis match in Forest Hills, New York. The story, in large measure, is presented to us through images. But who is presenting us with these images? Who is giving access to the visage of Bruno straining to reach the lighter? Who is, in effect, inviting us to “Behold Bruno”?
It cannot be Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock can only present us with the image of Robert Walker, the actor who played Bruno. Yet, supposedly, Bruno is being presented to us visually so that we can see him imaginarily. Who is doing this? It must be an implicit fictional presenter – here we say presenter rather than narrator in order to acknowledge the fact that much of the “telling” in motion pictures is done through showing or presenting.
Motion pictures not only present actors who play fictional characters but they also present additional elements of the narrated episodes, such as the perspective from which they are seen and the sounds that accompany them. Of course, the sounds internal to the narrative are not the only sounds that movie audiences hear. Much of the soundtrack typically consists of non-diegetic music – that is, music which is not internal to the storyworld, but which nevertheless can comment upon its events and inflect the ways in which we perceive them. But, who, then, presents said narrated events replete with their non-diegetic accompaniments?
Specifically, what is the relation between non-diegetic movie music and the implicit fictional presenter? Just as the implicit fictional presenter asserts the existence of certain states of affairs in the fictional world by presenting them to us visually, so certain states of affairs can be revealed to obtain in the storyworld by means of the non-diegetic music that the implicit fictional presenter addresses to us. Non-diegetic music, for instance, may indicate by means of dissonant music that a character is fraught with inner turmoil. But how did we gain access to this truth within the fictional world? The implicit fictional presenter informed us by means of the non-diegetic dissonant music.
As we saw in the previous section, movie music may perform a variety of functions. A number of these functions have to do with alerting the audience to the way in which things actually stand in the fictional world. In this respect, the implicit fictional presenter may be said to tell us something about, or inform us about, or report about states of affairs in the fictional world. That is, by way of non-diegetic music, the implicit fictional presenter asserts truths that obtain within the scope of the fiction operator.
There are a number of functions by means of which the implicit fictional presenter may report, through the use of non-diegetic music, how things stand in the world of the fiction. For example, the presenter may reveal, qualify, underline, or corroborate that a character is in such and such a psychological state. Perhaps her dreaminess is signaled by the use of strings in a high tessitura. Or the implicit fictional presenter may use non-diegetic music to foreshadow an event; often impending doom is indicated by the use of an ominous minor key. In general, the fictional presenter signifies that an event or an object is of greater importance than one might initially assume by orchestrating a scene with a pronounced flourish. Or the implicit fictional presenter may mobilize non-diegetic music to establish his or her attitude toward some character or event. In Psycho, the implicit fictional narrator presents his shock and terror at the murder of the detective by means of Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking violins. And, in addition, the presenter may alert us to events in the fiction through the score, as in the case of the leitmotif of the shark in Jaws. Because these usages of non-diegetic music make a difference in what we take to be reports of what is true in the fictional world, we purportedly need the implicit fictional presenter as a narrative agency. Sometimes this information arrives subliminally, but often we are quite aware of it, despite the old saw that audiences do not hear movie music (Gorbman 1987).
One problem with the very idea of the implicit fictional presenter is that often things are revealed in fictions of which it is given that no one in the fictional world is aware. For example, in one episode of the television program Six Feet Under, we see the character Nate bury his dead wife out in the desert. It is given in the fiction that there are no other witnesses. But if the implicit fictional presenter is a denizen of the fiction, then there was at least one witness. Thus, positing the implicit fictional presenter can lead to contradictions (Currie 1995: 173–4).
One way to patch up the theory in order to avoid this problem is to deny that the implicit fictional presenter observes the events recounted. Jerrold Levinson, for example, regards the implicit fictional presenter as “a kind of perceptual pilot through the film world, rather than as an observer of it whom we opportunistically inhabit” (1996: 254). Quoting George Wilson, Levinson repeats: “the narrator is a fictional figure who, at each moment of the film, asserts the existence of certain fictional states of affairs by showing them to the audience demonstratively; that is, by ostending them within and by means of the boundaries of the screen” (1996: 254). The implicit fictional presenter does not observe the things he points out, but only points to them in a way that implies “Behold.”
Yet it is a bit strange to think of a person-like being, fictional or otherwise, who points to things that it cannot see. However, even if the implicit fictional presenter does not witness that which he or she shows, it still is not clear that the Six Feet Under counterexample can be circumvented so easily. For surely, if there is such a thing as an implicit fictional presenter acting as our perceptual pilot – showing us this and then that in the storyworld – then the implicit fictional presenter must be cognizant of that to which he is drawing our attention.
And this then allows us to reframe the Six Feet Under example. As the episode establishes the case, no one in the world of the story knows where Nate has buried his wife. However, if there is an implicit fictional presenter, then there is someone – a fictional narrator – in the fiction who is cognizant that Nate has buried his wife under a tree in the desert. At this point, we may be told that the implicit fictional presenter is not a cognizer. But if the implicit fictional narrator is not a cognizer, can this creature still be thought of as a narrator? A narrator is presumably person-like, especially with respect to possessing the cognitive wherewithal to do things such as telling, asserting, reporting, and so forth. So either the implicit fictional narrator is cognizant of the location of Nate’s burial of his wife, thereby contradicting the story being told, or the implicit fictional narrator is bereft of cognitive powers, in which case the implicit fictional narrator does not appear to be a narrator.
At this point, an attempt might be made to balkanize the storyworld ontologically. A distinction might be drawn within the fictional domain between the world of the story and the world of the film (cf. Levinson 1993: 71–2). The world of the story is where characters such as Nate live. None of those characters, save Nate, is cognizant of what he has done with his wife’s body. But there is also the fictional world of the film in which facts about the implicit fictional presenter are established. Yet this distinction not only seems ad hoc, but also violates the principle defended by friends of the implicit fictional presenter that the implicit fictional presenter and the other fictional characters are all on the same level.
The problems with the implicit fictional narrator broached so far apply to every channel of implicit fictional presentation. They pertain to the way the implicit fictional presenter might disclose something thought to be unknown by anyone in the fiction by visual or aural means – by means of a close up or some non-diegetic music. Yet there also seem to be special problems that arise when we focus on the implicit fictional presenter’s use of non-diegetic music. This music does not belong to the fiction. Putatively, it is unheard by those who live inside the fiction operator. How does the implicit fictional presenter have access to it and how does said presenter wield what he cannot hear in such a way as to reveal things in the domain of the fiction?
That is, how can you assert the existence of certain states of affairs in the storyworld by means of music you do not or cannot hear? Maybe one way to deal with this problem is to develop the suggestion by George Wilson that we think of the implicit fictional narrator on the model of documentary filmmakers (2006: 194–7). When we digest a fiction film, we imagine that we are watching a documentary made within the world of the fiction by the implicit fictional presenter or a team of them. This then can be used to handle the question of how the implicit fictional presenter is able to wield the non-diegetic music that seemed so mysterious above. Simply put, the implicit fictional presenter has laid a soundtrack down on his documentary film.
But are we to imagine that we are seeing documentary films before the advent of cinema? Watching Ben Hur would require us to imagine the existence of cinema before the existence of cinema (Currie 1995: 173; Carroll 2006: 179)! Moreover, the documentary hypothesis would not really dispel problems of the sort engendered by Six Feet Under, since the hypothesis would require that an entire motion picture crew saw Nate, knew what he did and where he did it, despite the story’s implication that no one did.
At this point, in order to block counterexamples such as Ben Hur but also cases such as Six Feet Under, it may be proposed that the implicit fictional presenters are not to be thought of as people. They are some kind of natural iconic recording devices, like mirrors, or at least the mirrors possessed by wicked witches (Wilson 2006: 195). They imprint images and presumably sounds, but without human intervention. Because these devices existed from the beginning of time, the existence of “documentaries” emerging from within fictions whose events antedate the advent of cinema are not problematic. Moreover, since these natural iconic devices are not person-like but sheer physical processes, they do not contradict the implications of films in which the events being shown are given as neither seen nor cognized by anyone.
However, this raises the question, once again, of whether they are narrators. The friends of the implicit fictional presenter are very skeptical of the notion that movies might narrate themselves – a view propounded by David Bordwell (1986: 61–6). Yet is not the notion of natural iconic recording devices that serve up the likes of an episode of Six Feet Under precariously close to the notion that movies narrate themselves?
One way to deflect this line of objection to the supposition of natural iconic recording devices is to claim that we need not question the inner workings of these devices – we need not worry about whether they are person-like or whether the way they operate is compatible with the minimal requirements of what counts as a narrator (Wilson 2006: 196). We need merely suppose they work.
For example, in the old Flash Gordon series, there is a viewing machine that allows you to see anywhere in the universe by simply turning it on. It is just given that this is how the machine operates. It is silly to bring questions about actual-world physics to bear on the world of Flash Gordon – likewise for questions about how the natural iconic recorders function.
Nevertheless, this argument rides upon a false analogy. It is true that the viewing machine in the Flash Gordon series is mysterious. After all, how could there be recording devices at every point in the universe? But within the fiction, it is explicitly given that these contraptions work as represented. So we agree with this supposition, just as we agree that vampires have the potential to be immortal. Where we are explicitly told in the fiction or genre to waive our presuppositions about how we believe the world works, we do so.
But what about when we are not explicitly told to waive our real-world presuppositions with regard to the fictional domain? What are we to think when the room that is filling up with water has entrapped the heroine? Well, obviously, that she will drown if she is submerged for too long. Why do we suppose that? Because our default heuristic when following fictions is to bring to bear on the fiction all the presumptions we make about the actual world, unless told otherwise, either within the fiction itself, or by its genre, or its historical context. That is, a realistic heuristic prevails, unless we are told to suspend it, as we are in the case of undying vampires (Walton 1990: 144–50).
But what does this have to do with the debate about our implicit fictional iconic recorders? Namely, that they do not enjoy the same privileges as do the video contraptions in Flash Gordon’s universe. We are explicitly instructed that Flash’s viewing devices work. In short, an explicit avowal or straightforward implication is required to withdraw the realistic heuristic (Gaut 2004: 237–46). Nevertheless, this is precisely what is not forthcoming with respect to an implicit fictional presenter, whether an implicit documentarian or even someone or something more exiguous. For, they are, by definition, implicit (Carroll 2009: 204).
But since we have not been explicitly told to waive the realistic heuristic with regard to these alleged fictional presenters, it is open to us to ask about their nature and to question, specifically, whether a story can be told about them which explains how, although putatively sheer physical processes, they can still count as narrators.
Moreover, although it may be possible to imagine that the individual shots in a documentary could be produced by some natural iconic image-maker, such as a mirror, it is much harder to imagine how an entire film, edited in a narratively intelligible fashion, could be produced by means of a sheer natural process. And undoubtedly even more daunting will be imagining that an entire non-diegetic musical track could be affixed to the visuals with such synchronized precision as a result of the interaction of blind natural forces.
At this juncture, friends of implicit fictional narration will demand to know who is narrating the story, if we rid ourselves of the implicit fictional presenter. Yet here it pays to ask ourselves whether or not we dismissed the possibility too quickly that it might be the actual or implied filmmaker, or some combination of the two. These options were rejected earlier because it was claimed that in order for things to be true in the fiction, there would have to be some narrative agency inside the fictional world that is responsible for reporting or asserting or presenting those truths. But why accept the proposition that there must be an act of asserting or reporting or telling inside the fiction in order for things to be true in the fiction?
Rather it is the actual filmmaker, or the actual filmmaker in concert with the implied filmmaker, who does this. They make this and that true in the fiction by mandating that we imagine (i.e. entertain as unasserted) certain propositional contents. For example, it is true in the fiction The Birds that Melanie Daniels is attacked in the attic because Alfred Hitchcock and his team of fictioneers have mandated that we imagine the propositional content: “that Melanie Daniels is attacked in the attic.” Moreover, the various functions of non-diegetic movie music that friends of the implicit fictional presenter attribute to “him” can easily be attributed to the actual filmmaker or the actual filmmaker in combination with the implied filmmaker. It is Max Steiner who alerts us to the onset of King Kong by means of the non-diegetic music that imitates his footfalls. Steiner achieves this by mandating that we imagine that it is true in the fiction that something is coming the lovely Miss Darrow’s way.
In other words, there is no pressure here to presume that there are mute acts of assertion going on within the fictional world. Thus there is no reason to posit an implicit fictional presenter as the narrator. The actual filmmaker, or the implied filmmaker, or the two in concert are sufficient to account for the narration of the movie, unless one is equivocating on the notion of a narrator by taking it to be equivalent to a teller or reporter, rather than merely being the creator of the narrative. But it is surely only on the basis of the latter sense that we concur that every narrative has a narrator.
Moreover, in the case of non-diegetic music, it seems far less strained to attribute it to the narrative agency of the actual movie-makers, perhaps in combination with the implied movie-makers, just because there are no soundtracks in the world of the fiction for the allegedly implicit fictional presenters to manipulate.
See also Definition (Chapter 1), Performances and recordings (Chapter 8), and Ontology (Chapter 4).
Bordwell, D. (1986) Narration and the Fiction Film, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Carroll, N. (1988) Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory, New York: Columbia University Press.
—— (2006) “Film/Narrative: Introduction,” in N. Carroll and J. Choi (eds) The Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 175–84.
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Currie, G. (1995) Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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—— (1996) “Film Music and Narrative Agency,” in D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (eds) Post-Theory, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 248–82.
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Walton, K. (1990) Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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Kania, A. (2005) “Against the Ubiquity of Fictional Narrators,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63: 47–54. (Argues against the necessity of positing fictional narrators in every narrative fiction.)