unreliable narrator

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English[edit]

WOTD – 23 April 2023

Etymology[edit]

Apparently coined by the U.S. literary critic Wayne Clayson Booth (1921–2005) in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961):[1] see the quotation.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

unreliable narrator (plural unreliable narrators)

  1. (literary theory) A narrating character or storyteller in a literary or other artistic work (such as a film, novel, play, or song) who provides conflicting, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise questionable information to the audience or reader. [from 1961]
    Coordinate term: omniscient narrator
    • 1961, Wayne C[layson] Booth, “Types of Narration”, in The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press, published 1968, →OCLC, part I (Artistic Purity and the Rhetoric of Fiction), pages 158 and 159:
      [page 158] For practical criticism probably the most important of these kinds of distance is that between the fallible or unreliable narrator and the implied author who carries the reader with him in judging the narrator. […] [page 159] Unreliable narrators thus differ markedly depending on how far and in what direction they depart from the author's norms; […]
    • 1969 September, Charles A. Watkins, “Chaucer’s Sweete Preest”, in Earl R. Wasserman et al., editors, ELH [English Literary History], volume 36, number 3, Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins Press, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 463:
      The Priest also places a moral barrier between himself and his tale by establishing himself as an "unreliable narrator" capable of deception and irony. Thus, through his habit of speaking equivocally, he can disavow responsibility for his frequently provocative words.
    • 1998, “Afterword”, in William Gilmore Simms, edited by John Caldwell Guilds, Helen Halsey or The Swamp State of Conelachita: A Tale of the Borders (Selected Fiction of William Gilmore Simms), Arkansas edition, Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, →ISBN, page 137:
      As a young and inexperienced observer, Meadows represents the unreliable narrator whose views are sometimes wrong; but he learns from his mistakes and grows in perceptiveness and wisdom as the novel progresses.
    • 1999, Robert Fulford, “The Cracked Mirror of Modernity”, in The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture (CBC Massey Lectures), Toronto, Ont.: House of Anansi Press, →ISBN, page 97:
      The unreliable narrator demonstrates how the spirit of the times colours the work of storytellers, and how they in turn help to shape that spirit. We can find unreliable narrators in the books of Agatha Christie and William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov and Mordecai Richler – and hundreds of other writers. It's one of the emblematic literary devices of the century.
    • 2000 April 17, Richard Corliss, “A Yuppie’s Killer Instinct [review of American Psycho]”, in Time‎[1], New York, N.Y.: Time Warner Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2010-11-22:
      […] Patrick, for all his brutal truth telling, is an unreliable narrator. You see, he is mad—so mad, he probably committed the murders in his head. Which still makes him one sick yuppie.
    • 2007 September 16, Terrence Rafferty, “Cantabrigian psycho [review of Engleby]”, in The New York Times‎[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-06-16:
      [F]or the rest of the book [Sebastian] Faulks gets to indulge in the unreliable-narrator game of cunning ellipses and selective, gradual revelation.
    • 2011, Judy Doenges, “The Truthless Narrator”, in Andrea Barrett, Peter Turchi, editors, A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft, San Antonio, Tex.: Trinity University Press, →ISBN, page 44:
      Simply put, an unreliable narrator is one whose version of events runs counter to the story's true actions and to readers' interpretation of those events. Unreliable narrators are connivers, lunatics, and innocents, but what they all have in common is their unreliability as storytellers, their rejection or ignorance of the truth. Unreliable narrators equivocate, lie, fib, avoid, defend, divert, create decoys, flee, impersonate, change costumes, remake themselves and their origins, and distort the other characters' actions and intentions, breaking the rules in order to ensure readers' sympathy.
    • 2021 September 16, Sarah Maria Griffin, “Neurocracy: Futuristic Murder-mystery Fiction as Told through Wikipedia”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC:
      Omnipedia is an unreliable narrator – we are encouraged to look at the edit logs of each wiki page, to see what information is new and what has been deleted.

Translations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Wayne C[layson] Booth (1961), “Types of Narration”, in The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago Press, published 1968, →OCLC, part I (Artistic Purity and the Rhetoric of Fiction), pages 158–159: “For lack of better terms, I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say, the implied author's norms), unreliable when he does not.”

Further reading[edit]

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