Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses narration in Balzac's story.

Balzac's short story "La Grande Bretèche" is as much about storytelling itself as it is about the content of the story it tells. "La Grande Bretèche" is structured by multiple layers of embedded narratives. Theframe narrator, who introduces and concludes the story, is an unnamed guest at a dinner party during which the central story is told. The central narrator is the doctor Monsieur Bianchon, who tells his story to the other dinner guests. Within Bianchon's story, however, are three embedded narratives: that of the executor, that of the innkeeper, and that of the maid at the inn. Through this layering...