Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator合同档案 is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, who credibility has been riously compromid.[1] The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction.[2] This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually to deceive the reader or audience.[1] Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but 地胆头third-person narrators can also be unreliable.
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The nature of the narrator is sometimes immediately clear. For instance, a story may open with the narrator making a plainly fal or delusional claim or admitting to being verely mentally ill, or the story itlf may have a frame in which the narrator appears as a character, with clues to his unreliability. A more dramatic u of the device delays the revelation until near the story's end. This twist ending forces the reader to reconsider their point of view and experience of the story. In some cas the narrator's unreliability is never fully revealed but only hinted at, leaving the reader to wonder how much the narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted.
Historical novels, speculative fiction, and clearly delineated dream quences are generally not considered instances of unreliable narration, even though they describe events that did not or could not happen.
Contents 勾股定理测试题∙ 1 Examples of unreliable narrators o 1.1 Historical occurrences o 1.2 Novels ▪ 1.2.1 Types of Unreliable Narrators o 1.3 Films o 1.4 Television o 1.5 Comics ∙ 2 Notable works featuring unreliable narrators ∙ 3 References o 3.1 Footnotes o 3.2 Textbook 风险评价方法o 3.3 External links |
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[edit] Examples of unreliable narrators
[edit] Historical occurrences
One of the earliest us of unreliability in literature is Plautus' comedy Miles Gloriosus (2-3 century BC) which features a braggster soldier who constantly embellishes his accomplishments. The literary device of the "unreliable narrator" was ud in veral medieval fictional Arabic tales of the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the 享受英语Arabian Nights.[3] In one tale, "The Seven Viziers", a courtesan accus a king's son of having assaulted her, when in reality she had failed to duce him (inspired by the Qur'anic/Biblical story of Yusuf/Joph). Seven viziers attempt to save his life by narrating ven stories to prove the unreliability of the courtesan, and the courtesan responds by narrating a story to prove the unreliability of the viziers.[4] The unreliable narrator device is also ud to generate suspen in another Arabian Nights tale, "The Three Apples", an early murder mystery. At one point of the story, two men claim to be the murderer, one of whom is revealed to be lying. At another point in the story, in a flashback showing the rea
sons for the murder, it is revealed that an unreliable narrator convinced the man of his wife's infidelity, thus leading to her murder.[5]
Another early example of unreliable narration is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In "The Merchant's Tale" for example, the narrator, being unhappy in his marriage, allows his misogynistic bias to slant much of his tale. In "The Wife of Bath", the Wife often makes inaccurate quotations and incorrectly remembers stories.
[edit] Novels
慵懒时光Wilkie Collins春节经常放的纯音乐' early detective story The Moonstone (1868) is an early example of the unreliable narrator in crime fiction. The plot of the novel unfolds through veral narratives by different characters, which contradict each other and reveal the bias of the narrators. A controversial example of an unreliable narrator occurs in Agatha Christie's novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the narrator hides esntial truths in the text (mainly through evasion, omission, and obfuscation) without ever overtly lying. Many readers at the time felt that the plot twist at the climax of the novel was nevertheles
s unfair. Christie ud the concept again in her 1967 novel Endless Night.
Many novels are narrated by children, who inexperience can impair their judgment and make them unreliable. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Huck's innocence leads him to make overly charitable judgments about the characters in the novel.
Ken Key's two most famous novels feature unreliable narrators. "Chief" Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest suffers from schizophrenia, and his telling of the events often includes things such as people growing or shrinking, walls oozing with slime, or the orderlies kidnapping and "curing" Santa Claus. Narration in Sometimes a Great Notion switches between veral of the main characters, who bias tends to switch the reader's sympathies from one person to another, especially in the rivalry between main character Leland and Hank Stamper. Many of Susan Howatch's novels similarly u this technique; each chapter is narrated by a different character, and only after reading chapters by each of the narrators does the reader realize each of the narrators has bias and "blind spots" that cau them to perceive shared experiences differently.
