Exploring Unreliable Narration in Narrative Theory

1. Unreliable Narration between Authors’ Intentions • and Readers’ Cognitive Strategies • Current Trends in Narrative Theory: • International Perspectives • Project Narrative, Ohio State University • April 29, 2008 • Per Krogh Hansen • University of Southern Denmark

2. Wayne Booth: • “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. (Booth 1991 [1961]: 158f)”

3. Wayne Booth: • “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. (Booth 1991 [1961]: 158f)” • James Phelan, on unreliable narration: • “Narration in which the narrator’s reporting, reading (or interpreting), and/or regarding (or evaluating) are not in accord with the implied author’s.” (Phelan 2005: 219)

4. The rhetoricians… restricts the use of the concept to fiction brings the reader’s role out of focus

6. The rhetoricians… restricts the use of the concept to fiction brings the reader’s role out of focus Unreliable narration is… more flexible than the rhetoricians seem to acknowledge primarily a diegetic issue historically and culturally variable. Implied author is… in general only relevant to include if becoming visual as a narrative agent

7. Four forms of unreliable narration • Intranarrational unreliability • Internarrational unreliability • Intertextual unreliability • Extratextual unreliability

8. Communication in unreliable narration