In fiction (as implemented in literature, film, theatre, etc.) an unreliable narrator (a term coined by Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book The Rhetoric of Fiction) is a narrator whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The use of this type of narrator is called unreliable narration and is a narrative mode that can be developed by the author for a number of reasons, though usually to make a negative statement about the narrator. This unrelia...
more
In fiction (as implemented in literature, film, theatre, etc.) an unreliable narrator (a term coined by Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book The Rhetoric of Fiction) is a narrator whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The use of this type of narrator is called unreliable narration and is a narrative mode that can be developed by the author for a number of reasons, though usually to make a negative statement about the narrator. This unreliability can be due to psychological instability, a powerful bias, a lack of knowledge, or even a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader or audience. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but third-person narrators can also be unreliable.
The nature of the narrator is sometimes immediately clear. For instance, a story may open with the narrator making a plainly false or delusional claim or admitting to being severely mentally ill, or the story itself may have a frame in which the narrator appears as a character, with clues...
less
