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

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)”

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)

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

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

Four forms of unreliable narration  Intranarrational unreliability  Internarrational unreliability  Intertextual unreliability  Extratextual unreliability

Communication in unreliable narration Implicit author Stable IronyReconstructive strategy (Sedondary narrator/ character) Rejection‘Proof-reading’ Author  Character Narrator  Narration  Narratee  Reader Approval‘Misreading’ Omitted author Unstable Irony Constructive strategy