Mary Shelley's Frankenstein nests three first-person tellers inside one another: Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature. Who narrates the innermost of these three layers?

In The Canterbury Tales, the Host at the Tabard Inn proposes that the pilgrims tell tales to pass the time on the road, and the pilgrim-narrator later sets the collection down in writing. Who is the audience for a tale as it is first told?

Wuthering Heights opens as Lockwood's diary: '1801. I have just returned from a visit to my landlord.' Within that diary, who narrates most of the novel's family history?

The Turn of the Screw opens, 'The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless,' before Douglas reads aloud a dead governess's manuscript to the assembled guests. Which moment marks the crossing into the inner narrative?

Douglas tells the fireside company that the governess's manuscript is in her own hand and was sent to him before her death, but he was not present for the events it describes. What can Douglas's introduction most directly vouch for?

The Turn of the Screw is narrated by an unnamed guest who later writes out 'an exact transcript' of what Douglas read aloud from the governess's manuscript. How many narrating layers stand between the reader and the governess's own words?

Heart of Darkness is told by an unnamed listener aboard the Nellie on the Thames, who reports Marlow's words: "'And this also,' said Marlow suddenly, 'has been one of the dark places of the earth.'" What does routing the tale through this listener do?

Heart of Darkness opens aboard the Nellie on the Thames, where Marlow is one of five men waiting for the tide to turn before he begins to speak. Who is the primary narrator of the novel as a whole?

After Marlow finishes speaking, Heart of Darkness closes with the unnamed narrator looking at the Thames under a dark sky, its waterway seeming to lead 'into the heart of an immense darkness.' What does this return to the frame accomplish?

Robert Walton's letters describe finding Victor Frankenstein near death on the ice and record Victor's story as Victor tells it to him. What can Walton's frame most directly vouch for?

Frankenstein begins in a letter -- 'You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings' -- and closes in that correspondence after Victor's tale. What does this do?

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea gives Part One entirely to Antoinette's first-person voice. Where does the novel first hand the narration to her unnamed English husband, later recognizable as Rochester?

In The Canterbury Tales, the pilgrim-narrator warns readers, 'Turne over the leef and chese another tale.' A few lines later the Miller begins, 'Whilom ther was dwellynge at Oxenford / A riche gnof.' What marks the crossing into the inner tale?

The Handmaid's Tale ends with 'Historical Notes,' a transcript of a future academic symposium in which Professor Pieixoto discusses Offred's account as a set of found audio tapes. What authority does this frame mainly claim?

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ends with 'Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case' and does not return to Utterson's outside investigation afterward. What is the effect of ending on Jekyll's own document rather than returning to Utterson?

In 'The Custom-House,' Hawthorne's narrator says he found the scarlet letter and Hester Prynne's story among the papers of a past surveyor, Jonathan Pue. What does this frame provide, and what does it not prove?

In Absalom, Absalom!, Rosa Coldfield tells Quentin Compson what she knows of Thomas Sutpen, and Quentin later retells and elaborates it with his roommate Shreve, neither of whom witnessed the events. Which claim exceeds what they can vouch for?

At Wuthering Heights, Lockwood reads Catherine Earnshaw's childhood diary scrawled in the margins of old books, then records what he read in his own diary. Whose words is the reader encountering in that diary-within-a-diary passage?

Chaucer's pilgrim-narrator opens with 'Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote' and then repeats each pilgrim's tale exactly as he claims to have heard it. What does that claim let him disclaim?

Dracula is assembled from several characters' journals and letters, after an unsigned note states, 'How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them.' What effect does compiling multiple witnesses' documents have?