"Storytelling is a universal human activity and oral narration - particularly modern ''conversational'' narration such as anecdotes or personal stories - has long been fertile ground for linguists working on tense usage across a variety of languages. This book introduces ''performed'' oral storytelling into the debate, using data from traditional and contemporary storytellers in French to explore the narrative tenses attested, the discourse-pragmatic effects of tense switching, the structures deployed at points of temporal sequence, as well as broader questions concerning the nature of oral discourse."