Unreliable narrator

Unreliable narration is a special form of storytelling in which the reliability ( that is, mostly: the truth or appropriateness ), the narrator statements about the world told by the recipient is called into question. Narratives that use this method, often bring a homodiegetischen narrator ( a narrator, which is part of the narrated world) to use, but sometimes a heterodiegetischen narrator. In historical perspective, unreliable narration is a typical stylistic feature of the novels and stories of romance. In novels of postmodernism, it also appeared frequently.

  • 2.1 Theoretically unreliable narration
  • 2.2 mimetic partially unreliable narration
  • 2.3 MIMETIC undecidable Tell

Ideas for concepts

Introductory Remarks

According to narrative conventions enjoy statements of a narrator priority over the statements of a character, as long as characters and narrators report contradict. For example, Don Quixote claims he can see giant, the narrator but has previously explained that Don Quixote stands in front of windmills, believes the reader usually the narrator and not the figure. In contrast, an unreliable narrator must in its statements about the narrative world, at least partially, be evaluated as false. The privileged claim to truth through which the narrator > < has usually, so it must be restricted here. The unreliability of the narrator can be disclosed at the beginning of the story or turn out at the end with a twist. The MAE between author and reader is here doubled in an explicit and an implicit message, similar to the irony. So the unreliable narrator conveys the explicit message, while the (implicit ) Author past conveys the implicit and actually meant Embassy on the narrator.

The motivations of the narrator for the unreliable narration can be mental disorders, prejudice or ignorance, as well as a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader.

The coinage by Wayne C. Booth and subsequent criticism

Although this type of storytelling can already be found in the ancient Roman literature ( True Stories, Lucian of Samosata, 180, or Metamorphoses, Apuleius, 170 ), the term was first used in 1961 by the American literary critic Wayne C. Booth in the literary criticism and narrative theoretical discussion introduced:

"I have called a narrator reliable When He speaks for or acts in accor dance with the norms of the work ( Which is to say the implied author 's norms ), unreliable When He does not. "

"I have a reliable narrator called when he speaks for the norms of the work or acts in accordance with them ( ie the implied norms of the author ), unreliable if not. "

Booth's coinage criticize recent narratological approaches mainly because of their definitional fuzziness and its reference to the also controversial concept of the implied author, who is identical with neither the narrator nor the author, but an intermediate position engaging. This implicit author conveys, as the advocates of this theory, what is really meant the narrator past the ( implied ) reader, which only arises twice the communication. If, however, disputes - how many times in the contemporary narratological research - the scientific literature operationalization of the instance of the " implied author ," as well as Booth's determination to unreliable narrator becomes unusable.

Cognitive theories

While the theory deals in the wake of Booths ( Un - ) analyze reliability as manifest property of the narrative discourse or the narrator himself, take cognitive approaches the attribution of ( un) reliability in contrast, as rationalization strategy of a ( real, not implied ) reader on, the contradictions, inconsistencies or stylistic problems ( for example, an extensively -making of hyperbolas, interjections or excessive truth protestations use first-person narrator ) naturalized by that is dissolves and makes understandable that he himself classifies the narrator as unreliable. Alternatively inconsistencies can sometimes also by reference to the negligence of the (real) author ( prominent example: Kleist's Betrothal in St. Domingo, whose protagonist first Gustav, late August is called - what you appreciated most as a mere gaffe of the author in the research) be explained on generic features. Only the interaction of textual unreliability signals and interpretation process of the reader allows, according to the cognitive approach, the phenomenon > unreliability to conceive < adequately: " This means that a narrator does not in itself implausible " is ", but that this is of a determination observer is, which can vary historically, culturally, and ultimately even individually strong. "

Pragmatic theories

Relativism - reproach, which emphasizes the scientific uselessness of a category of analysis that might be subject according to its historical and cultural variability almost arbitrary attributions, deal - unlike their cognitive competitors - pragmatic approaches to understand the unreliability as a violation of clearly nameable maxims of rational communication. If a narrator his " conversation Contributions makes about < more informative than necessary, unclear or ambiguous to them or in the appropriate context entirely reported irrelevant, and this also does not happen with the intention of eliciting an implicature ( as it could be, for example, in an ironic narrator of the case ), he must be regarded as unreliable. So he not only violates the maxims of conversation, but at the same time the principle of cooperation, compliance for narrator fictional stories, therefore, is just as binding as such for faktuales storytelling in everyday contexts, because the > narratability < ( » tellability " ) must be shown a story only here. The disregard of the principle of cooperation, however, undermines the meaning and purpose of storytelling at all, by preventing a coherent, ' a narrative ' history and provokes readers to page nothing but a helpless "So what? ".

Types

Martinez and Scheffel distinguish three types of unreliable narrator:

Theoretically, unreliable narration

While the mimetic, that is descriptive, statements of the narrator, describing what is in the fictional world of the case, may be considered as true, are his theoretical statements, his ratings, judgments of taste, moral comments, etc. to be seen as unreliable. Thus, in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, the history of demonic composer Leverkiihn of the humanistic set first-person narrator is Dr. phil. Serenus Zeitblom taught. The philosophical and moral dimension to his description eludes him even obvious. His statements about the course of history so we can believe, but not his assessment and evaluation.

Mimetic partially unreliable narration

Here may be wrong or misleading both the mimetic and the theoretical statements. An example is the Austrian novel Between nine and nine of Leo Perutz. He tells of a student who police the morning before jumping to escape at nine clock of a house roof and saves so. He wanders through Vienna, survives some critical tracking situations and in the evening then placed nine clock by the police. Here he tries to save himself by jumping off the roof again, this leap, however, did not survive. When the police find him then, it is always nine clock in the morning, and it turns out that the whole story was sprung between the first and second leap of imagination of the dying students. The narrative time so do not is 12 hours, but only a few minutes. The reader accepts this retrospective reinterpretation, because otherwise would an indissoluble contradiction between the body and the end of the novel.

Mimetic undecidable Tell

Unlike the other two examples, there is the mimetic undecidable Tell a stable and clearly identifiable narrative world behind the speech of the narrator. Thus, also can not decide which statements of the narrator must be lifted as unreliable in relation to this world. Especially the texts of modernism and postmodernism solve this fixed reference point on, giving the impression of unreliability arises not only partially and temporarily, but may apply to the entire text. This raises a fundamental undecidability about what in the world told is actually the case. A classic example of this kind of storytelling are the nouveaux romans of Alain Robbe- Grillet. But while Robbe -Grillet strung together scenes and not commented by a perceiving consciousness or filtered ( external focalization ), an extreme, internal focalization can be just part of the mimetic undecidable telling. An example of this is the novel as it is by Samuel Beckett. It consists of fragmented sentences and parts that are no longer even be put together into a stream of consciousness. It is not structured by the logic of an action, but through repetition of certain names, events and issues, a stable and unique narrative world can not be reconstructed.

Examples

  • Movies: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
  • The Sixth Sense
  • Memento
  • The Usual Suspects
  • Fight Club
  • A Beautiful Mind - Genius and Madness
  • Shutter Iceland
  • Rashomon - The Pleasure grove
  • Atonement
  • Madly in love
  • The Others
  • One Hour Photo
  • Stay
  • Prestige - The Master of Magic
Hyperbole Fauxpas Cooperative principle Mimesis Alain Robbe-Grillet How It Is Stream of consciousness (narrative mode) Fight Club (novel) Shutter Island Robert Walser (writer) Memento (Film) Shutter Island (Film) Atonement (film) He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not (film) The Others (2001 film) Stay (2005 film)
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