Fallible vs. Untrustworthy Narrators
-Textual signals help the reader to decide whether the narrator is fallible or untrustworthy.
ex. Obvious grammatical or historical mistakes on the part of the narrator, direct warnings that the narrator should not be confused with the author, conflicts between fictional facts, etc.
-The decision allows the reader to predict whether the narrator is likely to always misreport or is prevented by circumstances (i.e. age) from telling the tale straight.
-The reader can then assume a strategy by which he can make different types of unreliable narration comprehensible and render fallible and untrustworthy narrators reliable in their unreliability.
-Fallible narrators make individual mistakes or leave open informational gaps that need to be filled in.
Wayne Booth:
-Defines unreliable as those narrators who articulate values and perceptions that differ from those of the implied author. He understands narrator reliability to be a function of irony.
-Booth also applies a communicative model to reading fiction…this model allows for secret communication between the “postulated reader” and the implied author. The reader feels included in a sort of “inside joke” with either the narrator or other characters in the text.
Ansgar Nunning:
-Takes issue with Booth’s definition of unreliability. He argues that Booth’s definition has led to imprecise usage of the term unreliable, a tendency to treat reliability and unreliability as binary opposites, and a lack of attention to how unreliability functions.
William Browning Spencer:
Unreliable narrators should “compel,” not “confuse,” readers. The latter is no fault of the fictional narrator but that of the creator (or author) of the text. Narrators who lie do so for an intended purpose (i.e. irony, pathos, satire, suspense, etc.). Untrustworthy narrators are more relatable to real-life individuals and experiences. Readers read and judge the narrator much as they would an acquaintance in real-life. Self-delusion is seen as a form of narrator unreliability, yet allows readers to understand the tragedy at hand before the narrator himself.
Tamar Yacobi:
Humans are innately unreliable, therefore human-like narrators assume this same unreliability.
Supernatural vs. human-like narrator identities:
-The judgment of a narration as unreliable--or otherwise--is always an interpretive, hypothetical move.
-Humans are innately unreliable, therefore human-like narrators assume this same unreliability.
-As inhabitants of their textual worlds, narrators cannot have metatextual or omniscient knowledge.
-William Riggan attributes "inherent fallibility" to flesh and blood narrators. Yet why should "being unreliable" contrast with "being (apparently) omniscient" in the first place?
Readers...
-Project own values onto text.
-Decide whether authors are fallible or unreliable based on their own perceptions.
The divergence between the reader’s worldview and that of the narrator—rather than inconsistencies between the narrator and the implied author—causes the reader to classify the narrator as unreliable.
-Textual signals help the reader to decide whether the narrator is fallible or untrustworthy.
ex. Obvious grammatical or historical mistakes on the part of the narrator, direct warnings that the narrator should not be confused with the author, conflicts between fictional facts, etc.
-The decision allows the reader to predict whether the narrator is likely to always misreport or is prevented by circumstances (i.e. age) from telling the tale straight.
-The reader can then assume a strategy by which he can make different types of unreliable narration comprehensible and render fallible and untrustworthy narrators reliable in their unreliability.
-Fallible narrators make individual mistakes or leave open informational gaps that need to be filled in.
Wayne Booth:
-Defines unreliable as those narrators who articulate values and perceptions that differ from those of the implied author. He understands narrator reliability to be a function of irony.
-Booth also applies a communicative model to reading fiction…this model allows for secret communication between the “postulated reader” and the implied author. The reader feels included in a sort of “inside joke” with either the narrator or other characters in the text.
Ansgar Nunning:
-Takes issue with Booth’s definition of unreliability. He argues that Booth’s definition has led to imprecise usage of the term unreliable, a tendency to treat reliability and unreliability as binary opposites, and a lack of attention to how unreliability functions.
William Browning Spencer:
Unreliable narrators should “compel,” not “confuse,” readers. The latter is no fault of the fictional narrator but that of the creator (or author) of the text. Narrators who lie do so for an intended purpose (i.e. irony, pathos, satire, suspense, etc.). Untrustworthy narrators are more relatable to real-life individuals and experiences. Readers read and judge the narrator much as they would an acquaintance in real-life. Self-delusion is seen as a form of narrator unreliability, yet allows readers to understand the tragedy at hand before the narrator himself.
Tamar Yacobi:
Humans are innately unreliable, therefore human-like narrators assume this same unreliability.
Supernatural vs. human-like narrator identities:
-The judgment of a narration as unreliable--or otherwise--is always an interpretive, hypothetical move.
-Humans are innately unreliable, therefore human-like narrators assume this same unreliability.
-As inhabitants of their textual worlds, narrators cannot have metatextual or omniscient knowledge.
-William Riggan attributes "inherent fallibility" to flesh and blood narrators. Yet why should "being unreliable" contrast with "being (apparently) omniscient" in the first place?
Readers...
-Project own values onto text.
-Decide whether authors are fallible or unreliable based on their own perceptions.
The divergence between the reader’s worldview and that of the narrator—rather than inconsistencies between the narrator and the implied author—causes the reader to classify the narrator as unreliable.