The narrator (the answer to the question “who is speaking?”) is a commonly used notion in the teaching of literature and in literary criticism, even though it is the object of a theoretical debate which is still too little known. Clarifying it requires an historical and epistemological approach to the opposition between communicational theories of narrative in general (no difference between fictional narrative, non-fictional narrative and communicational discourse) and non-communicational or poetic theories of the fictional narrative in particular (these theories are based on a thorough study of the linguistic and textual peculiarities of fictional narrative). The articles gathered here confront the two approaches starting from problems such as the identity and difference between certain terms and concepts, the refutation of theories, the reinterpretation of old theories within new theories, the historicity of translations...