Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel

by Elke D'hoker (Editor), Gunther Martens (Editor)

This volume deals with the occurrence and development of unreliable first-person narration in twentieth century Western literature. The different articles in this collection approach this topic both from the angle of literary theory and through a detailed reading of literary texts. By addressing questions concerning the functions, characteristics and types of unreliability, this collection contributes to the current theoretical debate about unreliable narration. At the same time, the collection highlights the different uses to which unreliability has been put in different contexts, poetical traditions and literary movements. It does so by tracing the unreliable first-person narrator in a variety of texts from Dutch, German, American, British, French, Italian, Polish, Danish and Argentinean literature. In this way, this volume significantly extends the traditional 'canon' of narrative unreliability. This collection combines essays from some of the foremost theoreticians of unreliability (James Phelan, Ansgar N�nning) with essays from experts in different national traditions. The result is a collection that approaches the 'case' of narrative unreliability from a new and more varied perspective.

344 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 16, 2008

Reviews

[Ida · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

An in-depth look into the unreliable narrator. The book delves into different Western (largely Europian) literary traditions, slightly exploring how different countries have different literary trends and eras, which I really liked since most of the literary analysis I've come across so far has focused primarily on English and American literature.

It's also fascinating to see how basically all of modern understanding of unreliable narrators in narratology is based on Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction, and then Nünning's rebuttal of that. Both were referenced in basically every essay.

I really enjoyed the more theoretical pieces, like Per Krogh Hansen's "First Person, Present Tense. Authorial presence and Unreliable Narration in Simultaneous Narration" and Lars Bernaerts "'Un Fou Raissonant et Imaginant'. Madness, Unreliability and The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short". The ones with a heavier focus on specific texts and their analysis I enjoyed less, probably because I haven't read the books they were analysing, but overall a very interesting deep dive into unreliable narrators.