The Author is not the Speaker

In a previous discussion we looked at "Narrators and Narrative Layers" and the author-reader/speaker-audience relationship. As readers we are tempted to confuse the speaker (i.e. narrator) with the author. Read the following poem by Emily Dickinson:

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

Now read another poem, also by Emily Dickinson:

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

In the first poem the author presents faith (to believe in God) as commendable; however, in the second poem the same author presents “Faith” as something that is not of much importance, especially "In an Emergency". How can we resolve this contradiction? One way is to say that the author changed her opinion about faith in between writing the two poems. A better literary understanding is to read the poems, not as the voice of the author, but as the voices of different speakers.

When studying literature it is good practice not to equate the author with the speaker. Just like Hamlet is not William Shakespeare, so too in poetry the speaker in the poem is not the poet.

Exercise Question:

1. Explain the difference between the author of the poem and the speaker in the poem.

2. It is possible to characterize (i.e. describe the character of) the speaker in the poem "I Never Saw a Moor"; however, it is not possible to use the same characterization and impose it on the author. Why not?

Narrators and Narrative Layers

A narrator (sometimes called a speaker), is basically the “voice” that speaks in a text. The word “narrator” comes from “narrate”, which means to tell a narrative; i.e. to tell a story. The narrator of the poem is therefore the “persona” or “entity” that tells the “story”.

Take for example the poem “Eldorado” by Edgar Allen Poe. Who is telling the “story” of the knight in search of Eldorado? Is it the author (Edgar Allen Poe) that is telling this story? It might be, but it is not necessarily. Rather, Poe created another “voice”, i.e. the narrator, to speak on his behalf.

Also, the narrator in this poem is not the only speaker. There are two other speakers as well, namely the knight and the “pilgrim shadow”.

The following diagram shows a depiction of the three basic narrative layers, each with a pair of entities, namely the (1) author and (2) reader, the (3) narrator and (4) addressee, and (5) character 1 and (6) character 2.

(Diagram from the English Department of TTU)

Exercise:

Use the poem “Eldorado” and replace these entities in the diagram with their proxies. For example, replace character 1 with “the knight”.

...ooOoo...

When trying to understand a poem it helps to identify the speakers, as well as identify who they are speaking to. Ask yourself: Who is the author? When the author wrote this poem, did he have a specific audience/reader in mind? Who is the narrator? Who is the narrator’s audience; i.e. who are the narrator's addressees? Who are the speakers (i.e. characters)?

Sound & Sense (p. 11) gives 21 points and questions that you can use to understand and evaluate a poem.