Nünning - Generic, Historic, Theors Unreliabele Narrator

ANSGAR NNNING
(Justus-Liebig-University Gieen)
Reconceptualizing the Theory, History and Generic Scope of

Unreliable Narration: Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and
Rhetorical Approaches
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
(T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding)
0. Prologue: Areas of Reconceptualization and Goals of the Article

Though the phenomenon of the unreliable narrator has been the subject of
lots of research, controversy and (re)conceptualization for more than forty
years, narrative theorists have not ceased from exploration and
(re)conceptualization, recently devoting more attention and more attention
to this fascinating as well as slippery concept.1 And though the various attempts at reconceptualizing the unreliable narrator have not reached a
consensus, narratologists at least agree that it is a key concept of narrative
theory and analysis. Ever since Wayne C. Booth first proposed the unreliable narrator as a concept, it has been considered to be among the basic
and indispensable categories of textual analysis. Hardly anyone to date
has modified or challenged Booths well-known formulation, which has
become the canonized definition of the term: 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 authors norms), unreliable when he
does not.2 According to Booth, the distinction between reliable and unre
1
2
Cf. e.g. Allrath (2005); Dernbach & Meyer (2005); Liptay & Wolf (2005); Pettersson
(2005); Phelan (2005).
Booth (1961: 158159).
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liable narrators is based on the degree and kind of distance3 that separates a given narrator from the implied author of a work. A comparison of
the definitions provided in standard narratological works, in scholarly articles, and in glossaries of literary terms shows that the great majority of
narratologists have followed Booth, providing almost identical definitions
of the unreliable narrator.
What most critics seem to have forgotten, however, is that Booth himself freely admitted that the terminology for this kind of distance in narrators is almost hopelessly inadequate4. There is indeed a peculiar discrepancy between the importance generally attributed to the question of
reliability in narrative and the unresolved issues surrounding the concept
of the unreliable narrator: There can be little doubt about the importance
of the problem of reliability in narrative and in literature as a whole [...].
[But] the problem is (predictably) as complex and (unfortunately) as illdefined as it is important5. Booths canonical definition does not really
make for clarity but rather sets the fox to keep the geese, as it were, since
it falls back on the ill-defined and elusive notion of the implied author,
which hardly provides a reliable basis for determining a narrators unreliability.
The thesis of this article is that the concept of the unreliable narrator
needs to be rethought because, as currently defined, it is terminologically
imprecise and theoretically inadequate. The postulation of essentialized
and anthropomorphized entities designated unreliable narrator and implied author ignores both the complexity of the phenomena involved and
the dynamics of literary communication and the reading process, standing
in the way of a systematic exploration of the cognitive processes which
result in the projection of unreliable narrators in the first place. Cognitive
narratologists have argued that it would be more adequate to conceptualize unreliable narration in the context of frame theory as a projection by
the reader who tries to resolve ambiguities and textual inconsistencies by
attributing them to the narrators unreliability. In the context of frame
theory, the invention of unreliable narrators can be understood as an interpretive strategy or cognitive process of the sort that has come to be
known as naturalization.
3
4
5
Ibid: 155.
Ibid: 158.
Yacobi (1981: 113).

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Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches
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As the title of this article suggests, it attempts to survey recent reconceptualizations of unreliable narration, not only showing that narrative
theory has made considerable progress in dealing with this very slippery
and complex topic but also offering some more reconceptualizations by
outlining a synthesis of cognitive and rhetorical approaches. Narratologists have not only identified the main problems in traditional accounts,
but have also provided a number of useful terminological and taxonomic
distinctions as well as theoretical refinements. Attempts to reconceptualize
unreliable narration mainly involve six areas: (1) the theory and definition
of unreliable narration; (2) typological distinctions of different kinds of
unreliability; (3) the textual clues and frames of reference involved in projections of unreliable narrators; (4) the respective roles of the reader, the
text, and the (implied) author; (5) the history of unreliable narration and
(6) the generic scope of unreliable narration. Let me hasten to add, however, that these are by no means the only issues that have not yet been
fully resolved. I will address some other open questions in the last two
sections of my article, without, however, pretending to have an ace up my
sleeve.
Realigning the relation between the cognitive and the rhetorical approaches, this article attempts to show that recent work in cognitive narratology and rhetorical theory provides the basis for reconceptualizing
unreliable narration and to advance both our understanding of and the discussions surrounding this key notion of narrative theory. In addition to
giving an assessment and critique of the standard notion of the unreliable
narrator and to providing a brief summary of recent suggestions for distinguishing between different kinds of unreliability and different types of
unreliable narrators, the first part of the essay outlines a cognitive reconceptualization of unreliable narration, which can shed more light on the
usually unacknowledged presuppositional framework on which theories of
unreliable narration have hitherto been based. Trying to combine the insights of cognitive and rhetorical approaches and examining the question
of how we detect an unreliable narrator in practice, part two argues that
the whole notion of unreliable narration only makes sense when we bear
in mind that ascriptions of unreliability involve a tripartite structure that
consist of an authorial agency, textual phenomena (including a personalized narrator and signals of unreliability), and reader response. While the
third section provides a brief outline of the history of unreliable narration,
the fourth section argues for a reconceptualization of the generic scope of
unreliable narration, arguing that it is unjustifiable and counter-productive

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to limit the study of this phenomenon to narrative fiction. The fifth part
addresses a number of unresolved issues surrounding unreliable narration,
making some tentative suggestions how they might be reconceptualized.
The final section will then provide a brief summary and suggest that much
more work needs to be done in this particular field of narratology.
1. Reconceptualizing Conventional Theories

of Unreliable Narration
This articles point of departure is the fact that though there has recently
been a great deal of reconceptualization in the field of narratology in general and unreliable narration in particular, we have not reached anything
like a consensus as to how the theory and history of this particularly slippery phenomenon should be conceptualized. Several narrative theorists,
including Monika Fludernik, James Phelan, Kathleen Wall, Tamar
Yacobi, and Bruno Zerweck, have recently argued that the concept of the
unreliable narrator, as traditionally defined, needs to be radically rethought and thoroughly historicized. James Phelan and Patricia Martin, for
instance, have provided a groundbreaking typology of unreliable narrators, which allows the critic to distinguish different types of unreliability
and various kinds of unreliable narrators from one another.
Other theorists have proposed a reader-centred and cognitive approach
to unreliable narration. As already stated above, cognitive narratologists
have argued that instead of postulating an unreliable narrator, whose reliability or unreliability is gauged against the norms of an anthropomorphicized entity designated the implied author, it would be more sensible
to conceptualize the relevant phenomena in the context of frame theory as
a projection by the reader who tries to resolve ambiguities and textual inconsistencies by attributing them to the narrators unreliability. In the
context of a cognitive narratology (M. Jahn), the readers projection of
unreliable narrators can be understood as an interpretive strategy or a
cognitive process of the sort that has come to be known as naturalization.6 A number of empirical frames of reference and literary models can
be seen to function as standard modes of naturalization by means of which
readers (and, one might add, critics and most theorists of unreliable narration) account for contradictions both within texts and between the world
Culler (1975), Fludernik (1996).

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model of texts and their empirical world-models. Recent work on unreliable narration has also explored the textual signals and extratextual frames
of reference involved in this process, which can determine readers decisions about a narrators potential unreliability. The models used for accounting for unreliable narration provide a coherent context which resolves textual inconsistencies and makes the respective novels intelligible
in terms of culturally accepted frames.
Since I have myself been involved in the ongoing attempts to rethink
the concept of unreliable narration, I would first of all like to briefly summarize my critique of what for convenience sake I will call conventional
theories of unreliable narration and then outline what has come to be
known as a cognitive reconceptualization of unreliable narration.
A brief look at conventional accounts of the concept unreliable narrator may be in order so as to distinguish the approach argued for in this essay from the general approach in narratology. Let us begin by asking just
what it is that we know about the mysterious unreliable narrator and by
presenting a critique of traditional theories of unreliable narration against
the background of five hypotheses. The definition provided by Gerald
Prince in his Dictionary of Narratology will suffice to indicate what is
usually meant by the term unreliable narrator: A narrator whose norms
and behaviour are not in accordance with the implied authors norms; a
narrator whose values (tastes, judgments, moral sense) diverge from those
of the implied authors; a narrator the reliability of whose account is undermined by various features of that account.7 Despite the good job
Prince does in summarizing the communis opinio on the subject, this definition of the concept comprises an unholy mixture of vagueness and tautology. Nonetheless, most theorists and critics who have written on the
unreliable narrator take the implied author both for granted and for the
only standard according to which unreliability can be determined.
One of the central problems in defining unreliable narration is the unresolved question of what standards allow the critic to recognize an unreliable narrator. The usual answer to the question Unreliable, compared to
what? is woefully inadequate and untenable, because it specifies just one
basis for recognizing the narrators unreliability, namely the ill-defined
concept of the implied author. The trouble with all of the definitions that
are based on the implied author is that they try to define unreliability by
Prince (1987: 101).

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relating it to a concept that is itself ill-defined and paradoxical. Curiously

enough, however, even the most sophisticated recent articles retain the notion of the implied author. In what are arguably the best critiques of orthodox theories of unreliable narration to date, the articles of Tamar
Yacobi (1981, 1987) and Kathleen Wall (1994), the authors hold on to the
implied author as though he, or rather it, was the only possible way of accounting for unreliable narration.
Critics who argue that a narrators unreliability is to be gauged in comparison to the norms of the implied author just shift the burden of determination onto a critical passepartout that is itself notoriously ill-defined.
The tenacity with which narratologists have clung to the implied author in
their attempts at defining unreliability suggests, as Mieke Bal observes,
that the implied author is a remainder category, a kind of passepartout
that serves to clear away all the problematic remainders of a theory8. Introducing the implied author has certainly not managed to clear away the
problems of defining unreliable narration.
Some narratologists have pointed out that the concept of the implied
author does not provide a reliable basis for determining a narrators unreliability. Not only are the values (or norms) of the implied author [...]
notoriously difficult to arrive at9, as Rimmon-Kenan observes, but the
implied author is itself a very elusive and opaque notion. One might go
much further than Rimmon-Kenan and suggest that the implied authors
norms are impossible to establish and that the concept of the implied author is dispensable.
From a theoretical point of view, the concept of the implied author is
also problematic because it creates the illusion that it is a matter of a
purely textual phenomenon. But it is obvious from many of the definitions
that the implied author is a construct established by the reader on the basis
of the whole structure of a text. When Chatman writes that we might better speak of the inferred than of the implied author10, he implicitly
concedes that one is dealing with something that has to be worked out by
the reader. Being a structural phenomenon that is voiceless, the implied
author must be seen as a construct inferred and assembled by the reader
from all the components of the text11. Toolan has made the sensible sug
8
9
10
11
Bal (1981b: 209).

Rimmon-Kenan (1983: 101).
Chatman (1990: 77).

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gestion that one should look at the implied author not as a speaker but as a
component of the reception process, as the readers idea of the author:
The implied author is a real position in narrative processing, a receptors
construct, but it is not a real role in narrative transmission. It is a projection back from the decoding side, not a real projecting stage on the encoding side.12
The most controversial aspect of the concept of the implied author is
that it carries far-reaching, though largely unacknowledged theoretical
implications. First, the concept of the implied author reintroduces the notion of authorial intention, though through the back-door. As Chatman has
pointed out, the concept of implied authorship arose in the debate about
the relevance of authorial intention to interpretation13. Providing a new
link to the sphere of the actual author and authorial values14, the implied
author turns out to be little more than a terminologically presentable way
of making it possible to talk again about the authors intention: The concept of the implied author, with its air of being an inference from the
work and thus as it were, like plot, an objective feature of the work, enables Booth to talk about the author under the guise of still appearing to
talk about the work.15 Second, representing the works norms and values,
the implied author is intended to serve both as a yardstick for a moralistic
kind of criticism and as a check on the potentially boundless relativism of
interpretation. Third, the use of the definite article and the singular misleadingly suggest that there is only one correct interpretation: The very
fact that Booth and Chatman speak of the implied author already implies,
suggests the existence of one ideal interpretation of the narrative text.16
In short, the concept of the implied author appears to provide the critic
again with a basis for judging both the acceptability of an authors moral
position, about which, according to Booth, a writer has an obligation to
be as clear [...] as he possibly can be17, and the correctness of an interpretation.
The lack of terminological clarity and the problematic theoretical implications associated with the notion of the implied author have led some
12
13
14
15
16
17
Toolan (1988: 78).

Chatman (1990: 77).
York (1987: 166); cf. Yacobi (1987).
Baker (1972/73: 204f.); cf. also Juhl (1980: 203).
Berendsen (1984: 148).
Booth (1961: 389).

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narratologists to argue that the concept should be abandoned. Some theorists have recognized that it has not fulfilled the promise to account for
the ideology of the text18 and is not capable of doing what it was supposed to do: It not only adds another narrating subject to the heap but it
fails to resolve what it sets out to bridge: the author-narrator relationship.19
Whether or not narratology is really well served with such a problematic concept as the implied author, be it of the personalized and anthropomorphicized or the depersonified variety, is an open question. Recently
some prominent narratologists have again emphatically come out in favour of the implied author, while others have argued just as strongly
against the concept. But given the fact that phenomena like norms and
values, structure, and meaning are central problems in literary criticism
and will continue to occupy the attention of theorists and critics alike, they
probably should not be allowed to disappear behind a concept like the implied author, which is ill-defined and potentially misleading. As I hope to
show below, the implied author is neither a necessary nor a sufficient
standard by which to determine a narrators putative unreliability.
Despite what common sense would appear to tell us, definition is a
problem with the unreliable narrator because most theories leave unclear
what unreliability is and whether it involves moral or epistemological
shortcomings. The narratological use of the term unreliability is very
vague and fails to distinguish between moral and epistemological issues.
Most definitions in the wake of Booth have emphasized that unreliability
consists of a moral distance between the norms of the implied or real author and those articulated by the narrator. But other theorists have pointed
out that what is at stake is not a question of moral norms but of the veracity of the account a narrator gives.20
In most work on the unreliable narrator, it is also unclear whether unreliability is primarily meant to designate a matter of misrepresenting the
events of the story or whether it consists of the narrators dubious judgments or interpretations. Rimmon-Kenans definition is a case in point.
She simply leaves open whether unreliability is to be gauged in comparison to the accuracy of the narrators account of the story or to his or her
18
19
20
Bal (1981a: 42).

Lanser (1981: 49f.).
Cp. Toolan (1988: 88).

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commentary and judgments: An unreliable narrator [...] is one whose

rendering of the story and/or commentary on it the reader has reasons to
suspect.21 The and/or-construction sounds very open and flexible but it
is a bit too nonchalant. Most would agree that it does make a difference
whether we have an deviant narrator who provides a sober and factually
veracious account of the most egregious or horrible events, which, from
his point of view, are hardly noteworthy, or a normal narrator who is just
a bit slow on the uptake and whose flawed interpretations of what is going
on reveal that he is a benighted fool. Lanser provides an answer to the
question of how we may classify narrators with respect to reliability
by positing three axes between the poles dissimulation vs. honesty, unreliability vs. reliability and narrative incompetence vs. narrative skill.22
Conventional theories of unreliable narration are methodologically unsatisfactory as well because they either leave unclear how the narrators
unreliability is apprehended in the reading process or they provide only
highly metaphorical and vague explanations of it. The metaphors that
Chatman uses in order to explain how the reader detects the narrators unreliability are a case in point. He resorts to what is arguably one of the two
most popular metaphors in this context, that of reading between the
lines. Chatman argues that readers conclude, by reading out, between
the lines, that the events and existents could not have been like that, and
so we hold the narrator suspect.23 Leaving aside for the moment that the
repeated use of inverted commas in definitions is not particularly reassuring, I just wish to suggest that such observations fail to shed much light on
how a narrators unreliability is apprehended in the reading process.
The second metaphor that critics and theorists continually employ in
order to account for unreliable narration is that something is going on behind the narrators back.24 Chatman, for instance, suggests that the implied author establishes a secret communication with the implied
reader.25 Riggan not only uses almost exactly the same phrase but he also
states quite unequivocally that the presence of the implied authors hand
is always discernible behind the narrators back.26 He does not, however,
21
22
23
24
25
26

Lanser (1981: 170ff.).
Chatman (1978: 233).
Cf. Riggan (1981: 13); Yacobi (1981: 125).
Chatman (1978: 233).
Riggan (1981: 77).

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bother to enlighten the uninitiated as to how the hand of the omnipresent

implied author behind the narrators back may in fact be discerned. Such
metaphors, though vivid, provide only very opaque explanations of unreliable narration. From a methodological and theoretical point of view, they
amount to nothing other than a declaration of bankruptcy. With regard to
the question of how readers know an unreliable narrator when they see
one, these metaphors are unenlightening.
To explain the mechanisms that stand behind the impression that a narrator is unreliable it is not necessary to postulate an implied author but
simply to have recourse to the concept of structural or dramatic irony.27
The structure of unreliable narration can be explained in terms of dramatic
irony and discrepant awareness because it involves a contrast between a
narrators view of the fictional world and the contrary state of affairs
which the reader can grasp. The reader interprets what the narrator says in
two quite different contexts. On the one hand, the reader is exposed to
what the narrator wants and means to say. On the other hand, the statements of the narrator take on additional meaning for the reader, a meaning
the narrator is not conscious of and does not intend to convey. Without
being aware of it, unreliable narrators continually give the reader indirect
information about their idiosyncrasies and states of mind. The peculiar effects of unreliable narration result from the conflict between the narrators
report of the facts on the level of the story and the interpretations provided by the narrator. The narrative not only informs the reader of the narrators version of events, it also provides him or her with indirect information about what presumably really happened and about the narrators
frame of mind.
If one gives up the notion of the implied author, then it is necessary to
modify Booths explanations of the unreliable narrator in such a way as is
already suggested by his definition of the implied author as the core of
norms and choices.28 Unreliable narrators are those whose perspective is
in contradiction to the value and norm system of the whole text or to that
of the reader. The phenomenon of unreliable narration can be seen as the
result of discrepant awareness and dramatic irony.
The general effect of what is called unreliable narration consists of redirecting the readers attention from the level of the story to the speaker
27
28
Cf. Booth (1961: 255).

Booth (1961: 74).

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and of foregrounding peculiarities of the narrators psychology. Wall argues very convincingly that unreliable narration refocuses the readers
attention on the narrators mental processes.29 What is needed therefore
is a more systematic exploration of the relation between unreliability and
characterization. In the only available article on the subject, Dan Shen has
shown that deviations in terms of reliability may have a significant role
to play in revealing or reinforcing narratorial stance and in characterizing a particular consciousness.30 In unreliable narration it is often very
difficult to determine whether what the narrator says provides facts about
the fictional world or only clues to his distorted and evaluating consciousness. Consequently the answer to the question reliable, compared to
what? may vary dramatically depending on whether the standard according to which we gauge the potential unreliability of the narrator involves
the events or the narrators subjective view of them.
In sum, the link that theorists have forged between the unreliable narrator and the implied author deprives narratology of the possibility of accounting for the pragmatic effects subsumed under the term of unreliable
narration. The critic accounts for whatever incongruousness she or he may
have detected by reading the text as an instance of dramatic irony and by
projecting an unreliable narrator as an integrative hermeneutic device.
Culler has clarified what is involved here: At the moment when we propose that a text means something other than what it appears to say we introduce, as hermeneutic devices which are supposed to lead us to the truth
of the text, models which are based on our expectations about the text and
the world.31 This, of course, raises the question of what kind of models
are involved in the cognitive processes that lead to the projection of an unreliable narrator.
Heeding Harkers (1989) call for a radical reorientation, I will try to
outline a cognitive, or model-oriented, approach to how texts that display
features of unreliable narration are read. This approach is indebted to
Jahns valuable suggestions for a cognitive narratology and to Fluderniks
work on natural narratology.32 I will contend that we can define unreliable
narration neither as a structural nor as a semantic aspect of the textbase
alone, but only by taking into account the conceptual frameworks that
29
30
31
32
Wall (1994: 23).

Shen (1989: 309).
Culler (1975: 157).
Cf. Jahn (1998); Fludernik (1993, 1996).

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readers bring to the text. If we are to make sense of unreliable narration at

all, it would be wise to begin by looking at the standards according to
which critics think they recognize an unreliable narrator when they see
one.
Determining whether a narrator is unreliable is not just an innocent descriptive statement but a subjectively tinged value-judgment or projection
governed by the normative presuppositions and moral convictions of the
critic, which as a rule remain unacknowledged. Critics concerned with unreliable narrators recuperate textual inconsistencies by relating them to accepted cultural models. Recent work on unreliable narration confirms
Cullers hypothesis about the impact of realist and referential notions for
the generation of literary effects. Culler argues that most literary effects,
particularly in narrative prose, depend on the fact that readers will try to
relate what the text tells them to a level of ordinary human concerns, to
the actions and reactions of characters constructed in accordance with
models of integrity and coherence.33
Riggans monograph on the unreliable first-person narrator provides a
case in point. Despite its insights into a broad range of texts, it suffers
from all of the theoretical shortcomings outlined above. A look at Riggans typology of unreliable narrators provides insight into the basic
mechanisms that are involved in the projection of an unreliable narrator.
Riggan distinguishes four types of such narrators, which he designates
picaros, madmen, nafs, and clowns.
These typological distinctions can best be understood as a way of relating the text to accepted cultural models or to literary conventions. What
critics like Riggan are doing is integrating previously held worldknowledge with textual data or even imposing preexisting conceptual
models on the text. The models used for accounting for unreliable narration provide a context which resolves textual inconsistencies and makes
the respective novels intelligible in terms of culturally prevalent frames.
It is these models which determine the perception of narrators designated as unreliable, and not the other way round. The information on
which the projection of an unreliable narrator is based derives at least as
much from within the mind of the beholder as from textual data. In other
words: whether a narrator is called unreliable or not does not depend on
the distance between the norms and values of the narrator and those of the
33
Ibid.: 144.

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implied author but between the distance that separates the narrators view
of the world from the readers or critics world-model and standards of
normalcy, which are themselves, of course, open to challenge. It is thus
necessary to make explicit that customary presuppositional framework on
which theories of unreliable narration have hitherto been based.
An analysis of the presuppositional framework on which most theories
of unreliable narration rest is overdue since research into unreliable narration has been based on a number of highly questionable conceptual presuppositions, which as a rule remain implicit and unacknowledged. The
general notion of unreliability presupposes some sort of standard for establishing whether or not the facts or interpretations provided by a narrator may be held suspect. The violations of norms which interest critics and
theorists are only made possible by norms which, as Culler wittily observes, they have been too impatient to investigate in detail.34 These
presuppositions about unreliable narration need to be made explicit and
clarified because they provide the key for reconceptualizing unreliability.
Among these underlying (and unwarranted) presuppositions on which
the concept of unreliable narration relies one might distinguish between
epistemological and ontological premises, assumptions that are rooted in a
liberal humanist view of literature, and psychological, moral, and linguistic norms all of which are based on stylistic and other deviational models.
An analysis of the presuppositional framework on which most theories of
unreliable narration are based reveals that the orthodox concept of the unreliable narrator is a curious amalgam of a realist epistemology and a mimetic view of literature.
The epistemological and ontological premises consist of realist and by
now doubtful notions of objectivity and truth. More specifically, the notion of unreliability presupposes that an objective view of the world, of
others, and of oneself can be attained. In contrast to the ideal of objective
self-observation it needs to be emphasized that a maximally objective
view of oneself can be attained only by others35. The concept of unreliable narration also implies that human beings are principally taken to be
capable of providing veracious accounts of events, proceeding from the
34
35
Ibid.: 160.
Fludernik (1993: 53).

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assumption that an authoritative version of events36 can in principle be

established or retrieved.
Theories of narrational unreliability also tend to rely on realist and
mimetic notions of literature. The concept of the unreliable narrator is
based on what Yacobi has aptly called a quasi-human model of a narrator37, and, one might add, an equally anthropomorphized model of the
implied author. Amors has provided a convincing critique of this general
tendency of allocating human features to the narrative agent.38
In addition, theories of narrational unreliability are also heavily imbued with a wide range of unacknowledged notions that are based on stylistic deviation models or on more general notions of deviation from some
norm or other. The notion of unreliability presupposes some default value
which is taken to be unmarked reliability. This is usually left undefined
and merely taken for granted. Most critics agree, however, that reliability
is indeed the default value.39 Lanser, for instance, argues that the conventional degrees zero [are] rather close to the poles of authority40, and Riggan observes that our natural tendency is to grant our speaker the full
credibility possible within the limitations of human memory and capability.41 To my knowledge, Wall is the first theorist of unreliable narration
who sheds some light on the presuppositions on which this reliable counterpart of the unreliable narrator rests when she argues that the reliable
narrator is the rational, self-present subject of humanism, who occupies
a world in which language is a transparent medium that is capable of reflecting a real world.
Vague and ill-defined though this norm of reliability may be, it supplies the standard according to which narrational unreliability is gauged. If
one takes a close look at the presuppositional framework on which theories of unreliable narration are based, one can further elucidate the assumption that an unreliable narrator departs from certain norms. What is
involved here are various sets of ill-defined and usually unacknowledged
norms, which can, however, theoretically be distinguished.
36
37
38
39
40
41
Wall (1994: 37).

Yacobi (1981: 119).
Amors (1991: 42).
Cf. Martinez-Bonati (1981).
Lanser (1981: 171).
Riggan (1981: 19).

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One of these sets of norms includes all those notions that are usually
referred to as common sense. Another set encompasses those standards
that a given culture holds to be constitutive of normal psychological behaviour. Third, the habit of discussing the stylistic peculiarities of unreliable narrators shows that linguistic norms also play a role in determining
how far a given narrator deviates from some implied default. Finally,
many critics seem to think that there are agreed-upon moral and ethical
standards that are often used as frames of reference when the question of
the possible unreliability of a narrator is raised.
One of the main problems with all of these tacit presuppositions that
are based on unacknowledged norms and notions of deviation is that the
establishment of norms is much more difficult than critics want to make
us believe. Fludernik, for instance, argues that the explicatory power of
stylistic deviation breaks down at the point where one can no longer establish a norm, or where deviations from the norm are no longer empirically perceptible.42
In both critical practice and in theoretical work on unreliable narration,
however, these different sets of norms are usually not explicitly set out but
merely introduced in passing, and they seldom if ever receive any theoretical examination. Let me give one typical example: in what is the only
book-length study of the unreliable first-person narrator, Riggan, for instance, suggests that the narrators unreliability may be revealed by the
unacceptability of his [moral] philosophy in terms of normal moral standards or of basic common sense and human decency.43 By saying this, he
lets the cat out of the bag in a way that is very illuminating indeed.
Phrases like these unwittingly reveal the real standards according to
which critics decide whether a narrator may be unreliable: It is not the
norms and values of the implied author, whoever or wherever that phantom may be, that provide the critic with the yardstick for determining how
abnormal, indecent, immoral or perverse a given narrator is, but normal
moral standards, basic common sense and human decency. In other
words: unreliable, not in comparison to the implied author, but unreliable
in comparison to what the critic takes to be normal moral standards and
common sense.
42
43
Fludernik (1993: 349).

Riggan (1981: 36).

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The trouble with seemingly self-explanatory yardsticks like normal

moral standards and basic common sense is that no generally accepted
standard of normality exists which can serve as the basis for impartial
judgments. In a pluralist, postmodernist, and multicultural age like ours it
has become more difficult than ever before to determine what may count
as normal moral standards and human decency. In other words, a narrator may be perfectly reliable compared to one critics notions of moral
normality but quite unreliable in comparison to those that other people
hold. To put it quite bluntly: a pederast would not find anything wrong
with Lolita; a male chauvinist fetishist who gets his kicks out of making
love to dummies is unlikely to detect any distance between his norms and
those of the mad monologuist in Ian McEwans Dead As They Come;
and someone used to watching his beloved mother disposing of unwelcome babies would not even find the stories collected in Ambrose
Bierces The Parenticide Club in any way objectionable.
There are a number of definable textual clues to unreliability, and what
is needed is a more subtle and systematic account of these signals. Unreliable narrators tend to be marked by a number of textual inconsistencies.
These may range from internal contradictions within their discourse over
discrepancies between their utterances and actions (cf. Riggan, who calls
this a gaping discrepancy between his conduct and the moral views he
propounds44), to those inconsistencies that result from multiperspectival
accounts of the same event.45
The range of clues to unreliability that Wall simply refers to as verbal
tics or verbal habits of the narrator 46 can and should be further differentiated by specifying the linguistic expressions of subjectivity. Due to the
close link between subjectivity on the one hand and the effect called unreliability on the other the virtually exhaustive account of categories of expressivity and subjectivity that Fludernik has provided are also extremely
useful for drawing up a list of grammatical signals of unreliability47,
which can be further differentiated in terms of the linguistic expressions
of subjectivity. The establishment of a reading in terms of unreliable
44
45
46
47
Ibid.: 36.
Cf. Rimmon-Kenan (1983: 101); Toolan (1988: 88).
Wall (1994: 1920).
Fludernik (1993: 227279).

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45
narration frequently depends on the linguistic and stylistic evocation of a

narrators subjectivity or cognitive limitations.48
Despite the above list of textual clues to unreliability it needs to be
emphasized that the problem of unreliable narration cannot be resolved on
the basis of textual data alone. In addition to these intratextual signals, the
reader also draws on extratextual frames of reference in his or her attempt
to gauge the narrators potential degree of unreliability. It should be
stressed again then that the term unreliable narrator does not designate a
structural or semantic feature of texts, but a pragmatic phenomenon that
cannot be fully grasped without taking into account the conceptual premises that readers and critics bring to texts. Consequently it seems doubtful
whether the term unreliable narrator can be defined, as Zimmermann has
recently maintained, solely on the basis of what she calls intratextual dissonances.49
What is needed instead is a pragmatic and cognitive framework that
takes into consideration the world-model or conceptual information previously existing in the mind of reader or critic. It is necessary to take into
consideration both the world-model and norms in the mind of the reader
and the interplay between textual and extratextual information. Coming to
grips with narrational unreliability is impossible both if one conceives
reading as being a mere bottom-up or data-driven process, and if one
conceives it as being nothing but a top-down or conceptually driven
process.50
Developing a viable theory of unreliable narration that accounts for the
complex meaning effects subsumed under the concept of unreliable narration presupposes an interactive model of the reading process51 and a
reader-oriented pragmatic or cognitive framework.52 It is only within an
interactive model of the reading process that an adequate theory of unreliable narration can be elaborated. Fluderniks explanation of irony illuminates how this might be conceptualized: textual contradictions and
inconsistencies alongside semantic infelicities, or discrepancies between
utterances and action (in the case of hypocrisy), merely signal the interpretational incompatibility [...] which then requires a recuperatory move
48
49
50
51
52
Cp. Fludernik (1993: 280).

Zimmermann (1995: 61).
Harker (1989: 471).
Ibid.: 471.
Cp. Fludernik (1993: 51).

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on the readers part aligning the discrepancy with an intended higherlevel significance: irony.53
An interactive model of the reading process alerts theorists of unreliable narration that the projection of an unreliable narrator depends upon
both textual information and extratextual conceptual information located
in the readers mind.54 Detaching the text from the reader and ignoring the
world-models in the readers mind has resulted in the aporias outlined
above. On the other hand, one should beware of throwing the baby out
with the bathwater by rejecting textual data as a legitimate basis for explaining unreliable narration.
Pragmatics and frame theory present a possible way out of the methodological and theoretical problems that most theories of unreliable narration suffer from because cognitive theories can shed light on the way in
which readers naturalize texts that are taken to display features of narrational unreliability. To offer a reading of a narrative text in terms of unreliable narration can be thought of as a way of naturalizing textual inconsistencies by giving them a function in some larger pattern supplied by accepted cultural models. Culler clarifies what naturalization means in this
context: to naturalize a text is to bring it into relation with a type of discourse or model which is already, in some sense, natural or legible.55 The
concept of unreliable narration, for instance, provides the reader with a
general framework which allows him or her to treat anything anomalous
as the effect of the narrators vision or cast of mind.56 To my knowledge,
Wall is the only theorist to date who has at least briefly discussed the relation between naturalization and unreliable narration: Part of the way in
which we arrive at suspicions that the narrator is unreliable, then, is
through the process of naturalizing the text, using what we know about
human psychology and history to evaluate the probable accuracy of, or
motives for, a narrators assertions.57 She is certainly also right when she
suggests that this kind of naturalization is so much a part of our reading
strategy with respect to both characters and narrators that, in all probability, we do not notice it.
53
54
55
56
57
Ibid.: 353.
Cp. Harker (1989: 476).
Culler (1975: 138).
Ibid.: 200.
Wall (1994: 30).

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47
Noticing and clarifying those unacknowledged frames of reference

provides the clue to reconceptualizing the whole notion of unreliable narration. The question of whether a narrator is described as unreliable or not
needs to be gauged in relation to various frames of reference. More particularly, one might distinguish between schemata derived from everyday
experience and those that result from knowledge of literary conventions.
A first referential framework should be based on the readers empirical
experience and criteria of verisimilitude. These frames depend on the referentiality of the text, the assumption that the text refers to or is at least
compatible with the so-called real world. Whether a narrator is taken to be
reliable or not depends, among other things, on such referential frameworks as the readers or critics
- general world-knowledge,
- historical world-model or cultural codes,
- explicit theories of personality or implicit models of psychological
coherence and human behaviour,
- knowledge of the social, moral or linguistic norms relevant for the
period in which a text was written and published58,
- the readers or critics psychological disposition, and system of
norms and values.
Deviations from what is usually referred to as common sense or general
world-knowledge may indicate that the narrator is unreliable. Second, narrators who violate the standards that a given culture holds to be constitutive of normal psychological behaviour are generally taken to be unreliable. What is involved here is psychological theories of personality or
implicit models of normal human behaviour. In order to gauge the potential unreliability of the fictitious child-molester Humbert Humbert, the
narrator of Nabokovs Lolita (1955), it does not suffice to look at textual
data alone, because the process of character constitution during the reading process is inevitably influenced by the readers implied personality
theory, as Grabes (1996) has convincingly demonstrated. Third, generally
agreed-upon moral and ethical standards are often used as frames of reference when the question of the possible unreliability of a narrator is raised.
When a narrative text violates one or several of these normative presuppositions, the reader can always resort to one of these frames of reference in order to naturalize the text. As the reader relates discrepancies to
58
Cf. Yacobi (1987).

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these frames of reference he or she brings the text into a context of coherence. Note that the choice of a particular frame of reference brings about a
change in the mode of reading.
A second set of models brought into play in order to gauge a narrators
possible unreliability involves a number of specifically literary frames of
reference. These include, for example,
- general literary conventions59,
- conventions and models of literary genres,
- intertextual frames of reference, that is references to specific pretexts,
- stereotyped models of characters such as the picaro, the miles gloriosus, the trickster,
- and last but not least the structure and norms established by the
respective work itself.
The generic framework determines in part which criteria are used when a
narrators potential unreliability is gauged.60 A narrator who is considered
to be unreliable in psychological or realistic terms may appear quite reliable if the text belongs to the genre of science fiction.
Both the concept of unreliable narration and the various types of unreliable narrators that have been proposed can be seen as modes of naturalization. These are based on widely accepted cultural frames which not only
link a high number of disparate items but which also resolve whatever
conflicts he or she may have noticed. The reader can try to account for
textual inconsistencies by reading the text as the utterance of an obtuse,
morally peculiar, or psychologically disturbed (i. e. unreliable) narrator. In
this process accepted cultural models of deviant, but plausible human attitudes or behaviour are made use of, and the text begins to become naturalized.
The postulation of an unreliable narrator can be understood as a
mechanism of integration61 in that it resolves whatever textual contradictions or discrepancies between the textual data and the readers worldknowledge there may have been and leads to a synthesis at a higher level.
Although relying on the implied and/or real author as the ultimate reference-point on which reliability-judgments performed by the reader62
59
60
61
62
Cf. Amors (1991).

Cf. Yacobi (1987: 20f.).
Yacobi (1981: 119).
Yacobi (1987: 22).

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49
depend, Yacobi comes to a similar conclusion: The hypothesis of a fictional reporters unreliability is a mechanism for reconciling textual incongruities by appeal to a deliberate tension between the viewpoint of this
informant (a character, narrator, dialogist, monologist) and that of the implied author who created him for his own purposes.63 In calling the
source from which the utterances emanate an unreliable narrator, the critic
not only makes peculiar features readily intelligible but she or he also
specifies how the text as a whole should be read. In the pragmatic context
provided by frame theory unreliable narration can be explained as an interpretive procedure64: as the result of interpretative work brought to
bear on the juxtaposition between the wording of the text and the (by implication incompatible) cultural or textual norms of the text as constructed
by the reader or implied as values shared by the reader and the realistic
textual world.65 Conceived in this way, the projection of an unreliable
narrator is not only informed by textual data, as Chatman and other proponents of the implied author would like to make us believe, but also by
the conceptual models or frames previously existing in the mind of the
reader or critic.
2. Reconceptualizing the Textual Clues and Frames of Reference

and the Roles of the Reader, the Text, and the (Implied) Author
Proponents of rhetorical approaches to narrative have taken cognitive narratologists to task for throwing out the textual baby with the bathwater of
the implied author. They have criticised the cognitive theory of unreliable
narration for overstating the role of the reader at the expense of the authors agency and the textual signals of unreliability. Moreover, Phelan
has rightly pointed out that the radically constructivist and cognitive conceptualization of unreliable narration fails to identify the multiple constraints imposed not just by texts and conventions of reading but also by
those who design those texts, viz. (implied) authors. The interpretive
move to read textual inconsistencies as a signal of unreliability after all
does not make much hermeneutic sense if it does not proceed from the as
63
64
65
Ibid.: 24f.
Yacobi (1981: 121).
Fludernik (1993: 440; emphasis added).

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sumption that someone designed the inconsistency as a signal of unreliability.66

In contrast to cognitive narratologists who seek to relocate unreliability
only in the interaction of reader and text67, Phelan has re-examined the
concept and reconsidered the location of unreliability in light of the recent
debates surrounding the implied author and unreliable narration. Reminding us of Booths notion of continuity without identity between the real
and the implied author, he retains the implied author, but moves him outside the text, thus re-establishing a closer link between the flesh and blood
author and the implied author. Rejecting both the reader-response version
of an inferred author and the conflation of the implied author with the
text, Phelan stresses the continuity that pertains between the real author
and his or her implied counterpart by redefining the latter as a construction by and a partial representation of the real author, as a streamlined
version of the real author, an actual or purported subset of the real authors capacities, traits, attitudes, beliefs, values, and other properties that
play an active role in the construction of the particular text.68 According
to this account, the implied author is not product or structure of the text
but rather the agent responsible for bringing the text into existence. Phelan
convincingly argues that the notion of unreliable narration presupposes
both a rhetorical view of narrative communication and the assumption that
authors fashion their texts in a particular way in order to communicate
sharable meanings, beliefs, attitudes, and values and norms.
Phelan and Martin as well as Greta Olson have reminded us that the
different models of unreliable narration all have a tripartite structure that
consists of (1) a reader who recognizes a dichotomy between (2) the personalized narrators perceptions and expressions and (3) those of the implied author (or the textual signals).69 Phelans rhetorical model in particular provides a timely reminder that meaning arises from the recursive
relations among authorial agency, textual phenomena, and reader response, and that not only readers but also authors draw on conceptual and
cultural schema: But if readers need conceptual schema to construct interpretations, authors also need conceptual schema to construct structural
66
67
68
69
Cf. Phelan (2005: 48).

Nnning (1998, 1999); Zerweck (2001).
Phelan (2005: 45).
Olson (2003: 93).

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51
wholes.70 While acknowledging that the same textual phenomena can

and often will be construed in different ways by different readers, his rhetorical approach is much better suited to accounting for the many ways in
which readers might indeed share understandings, values, and beliefs with
authors and with each other, thus opening up a useful way of exploring
the ethical dimensions of narratives.
In contrast to a radically constructivist and cognitive theory of unreliable narration, Phelans rhetorical and ethical approach to unreliable narration focuses on the interplay between authorial agency, text-centred phenomena or signals, and reader-centred elements in the reading-process.
This approach leads him to argue that while a text invites particular ethical responses through the signals it sends to its authorial audience, our
individual ethical responses will depend on the interaction of those invitations with our own particular values and beliefs.71 The concept of unreliable narration presupposes the existence of a constructive agent who
builds into the text explicit signals and tacit assumptions for the authorial
or hypothetical ideal audience in order to draw readersattention to an unreliable narrators unwitting self-exposure or unintentional betrayal of
personal shortcomings. From the point of view of a rhetorical approach to
unreliable narration, Zerwecks thesis that the unintentional selfincrimination of the personalized narrator is a necessary condition for unreliability72 thus needs to be supplemented by the insight that the narrators unintentional self-incrimination in turn presupposes an intentional
act by some sort of higher-level authorial agency, though it may be open
to debate whether we should attribute the constructive and intentional acts
to the implied author or the real author.
A brief look at Ian McEwans macabre as well as grotesque short story
Dead As They Come (1978) may serve as a convenient example to
show how the cognitive and rhetorical approaches can be synthesized to
solve many of the problems outlined above and to shed more light on the
questions faced by any critic doing interpretive analysis: What textual and
contextual signals suggest to the reader that the narrators reliability may
be suspect? How does an implied author (as redefined by Phelan) manage
to furnish the narrators discourse and the text with clues that allow the
70
71
72
Phelan (2005: 49)

Phelan/Martin (1999: 8889).
Zerweck (2001: 156).

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critic to recognize an unreliable narrator when he or she sees one? In

short, how does one detect a narrators unreliability? McEwans story is
told by a forty-four year old, rich and egotistic mad monologist (and misogynist) who, after three failed marriages, falls madly in love with a
fashionable woman who turns out to be a dummy, which he decides to
buy and to call Helen. After a couple of months of what the narrator describes as emotional and sexual bliss and perfect harmony he suddenly
begins to suspect that Helen is having an affair with his chauffeur
Brian.73 What makes him more and more suspicious is that Helen was
not listening at all, that she said nothing, absolutely nothing, and that
what he believes to see when he looks into her eyes is quiet, naked contempt.74 The story reaches its horrible climax, alluded to in the title,
when in a frenzied fit of passionate madness the narrator conceives two
savage and related desires. To rape and destroy her. [] I came as she
died.
To begin with, while the narrators factual reliability, i. e. his rendering
of the story, is only impaired by his highly idiosyncratic view of the world
and his deranged and disintegrating mind, the reader has plenty of reasons
to suspect both the nameless narrators commentary on and evaluation of
the details of the events, and the way in which the narrator reads and interprets e.g. what he deems to be Helens feelings. The main reason for
this is that the narrator violates both many of the standards that todays
culture holds to be constitutive of normal psychological behaviour and
widely accepted norms and values. Right from the very beginning the implied author leaves the reader in no doubt that the narrators view of the
world is radically separated from any sane readers or critics worldknowledge, which will immediately tell the reader that the narrator is
merely walking past a shop-window and that he is adoring a well-dressed
dummy:
I do not care for posturing women. But she struck me. I had to stop and look at her.
The legs were well apart, the right foot boldly advanced, the left trailing with studied
casualness. She held her right hand before her, almost touching the window [...] Head
well back, a faint smile, eyes half-closed with boredom or pleasure. I could not tell.
75
Very artificial the whole thing, but then I am not a simple man.
73
74
75
McEwan (1979: 71).

Ibid.: 7276.
Ibid.: 61.

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53
The narrators explicit self-characterization includes a number of opaque

statements like I am a man in a hurry and I am not a simple man but
he also provides the reader with plenty of information about himself, unwittingly exposing many of his personal shortcomings:
I must tell you something about myself. I am wealthy. Possibly there are ten men resident in London with more money than I. Probably there are only five or six. Who cares? I am rich and I made money on the telephone. I shall be forty-five on Christmas
Day. I have been married three times, each marriage lasting, in chronological order,
eight, five and two years. The last three years I have not been married and yet I have
not been idle. I have not paused. A man of forty-four has no time to pause. I am a man
76
in a hurry.
As in most other cases, the structure of unreliable narration underlying

McEwans story can be explained in terms of dramatic irony or discrepant
awareness because it involves a contrast between the narrators deranged
view of the fictional world and the divergent state of affairs which the
reader can grasp. In the case of McEwans unreliable narrator, dramatic
irony results from the discrepancy between the highly unusual intentions
and questionable value system of the narrator and the general worldknowledge, values, and norms of the average reader. For the reader, both
the internal lack of harmony between many of the statements and acts of
the narrator and contradictions between the narrators perspective and the
readers own concept of normality suggest that the narrators reliability is
indeed highly suspect. The reader interprets what the narrator says in two
quite different contexts. On the one hand, the reader is exposed to what
the narrator wants and means to say, i. e. the narrators version of his
tragic and fatal love-story with Helen. On the other hand, however, the
statements of the narrator take on additional meaning for the reader,
meaning the narrator is not conscious of and does not intend to convey.
Without being aware of it, McEwans unreliable narrator continually
gives the reader indirect information about his idiosyncrasies and deranged state of mind.
In addition to the peculiar characteristics, strange beliefs, and perverse
behaviour explicitly attributed to the narrator in the text, the implied author has also endowed the story with a wide range of signs and signals
that invite the reader to make inferences pertaining to the narrator beyond
76
Ibid.: 62.

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what is stated in the text. These inference invitations77 include, for instance, the bookkeeping manner in which the narrator reviews his marriages in chronological order, the breathless and self-centred quality of
his narratorial effusions, the excess and incoherence of the information he
provides, his disdain for others, and his predilection for silent women.78
Readers are thus invited to draw inferences pertaining to the narrator and
his questionable values, constructing him as a complete egotist, misogynist, and monologist who has no respect for others, who, as the decreasing
lengths of his marriages indicates, has apparently become increasingly intolerable, and who is only interested in satisfying his own needs, interests,
and carnal pleasures.
It is thus not just the distance that separates the narrators highly idiosyncratic view of the (fictional) world from the readers or critics worldknowledge, standards of normalcy, and norms and values that indicates to
the reader that the narrator is highly unreliable, but also a wide range of
textual features that serve as signals of unreliability. Like many other texts
featuring unreliable narrators, the narrative of McEwans monologist is
marked by a number of definable textual inconsistencies which function
as clues to unreliability. Two of the most prominent of these are internal
contradictions within the narrators discourse and discrepancies between
his utterances and actions. A very amusing example of an outrageous conflict between what a narrator professes to admire and what he actually
does is unwittingly provided by the narrator of Dead as They Come.
Without being aware of it, he gives away what a compulsive monologist
and complete egotist he is, not just by admitting that he prefers silent
women who take their pleasure with apparent indifference but even more
so by flagrantly, but unwittingly contradicting himself:
My ideal conversation is one which allows both participants to develop their thoughts
to their fullest extent, uninhibitedly, without endlessly defining and refining premises
and defending conclusions. [...] With Helen I could converse ideally, I could talk to
her. She sat quite still [...] Helen and I lived in perfect harmony which nothing could
79
disturb. I made money, I made love, I talked, Helen listened.
The implied author has furnished the story with many other textual signals
of the narrators unreliability such as conflicts between story and dis
77
78
79
Bortolussi/Dixon (2003: 8081).

McEwan (1979: 63).
Ibid.: 7071.

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course, between the narrators representation of events and the explanations, evaluations and interpretations of them that the narrator gives. In
such cases as the description of the scene in which the narrator actually
buys Helen, his commentary is at odds with the evidence presented in
the scene he comments upon.80 The reader or critic can establish such a
difference by analyzing those utterances in which the narrators subjective
bias is particularly apparent and comparing the world-view these imply
with the story itself. In Dead as They Come, for example, the narrators
expressive statements such as subjective comments, evaluations, and general remarks are completely at odds with the view of the events and characters that is projected by such narrative modes as description, report,
scenic presentation as well as by numerous small dramatic details. In his
factually accurate report of how he managed to get Helen, the narrator, for
instance, mentions that the five female shop-assistants avoided my eye
and that [t]hey smiled, they glanced at each other after he has made his
strange request to buy the dummy (ah my Helen), but he completely
fails to interpret correctly why they are doing this.81
In addition to such internal contradictions the implied author (once
again as redefined by Phelan) has carefully equipped the narrator with
idiosyncratic verbal habits which also serve as clues to unreliability. The
narrators stylistic peculiarities and his violation of linguistic norms and
of Grices conversational postulates play an important role in detecting the
narrators unreliability. There are, for instance, pragmatic indications of
unreliability such as frequent occurrences of speaker-oriented and addressee-oriented expressions. One does not need to take a word-count or
employ ponderous statistical methods to show that the unreliable narrator
of McEwans story as well as those of Martin Amis Money (1984) or
Julian Barnes Talking It Over (1991) are compulsive monologists as well
as egotists. The vast majority of their utterances are indeed speakeroriented expressions beginning with their favourite word, I. Similarly, it
is virtually impossible not to notice the plethora of addressee-oriented expressions that these and many other unreliable narrators tend to use. There
are also syntactic indications of unreliability such as incomplete sentences, exclamations, interjections, hesitations, and unmotivated repetition. McEwans Dead as They Come is full of them, and so are Patrick
80
81
Wall (1994: 25).

McEwan (1979: 65).

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McGraths novels. One could also mention such lexical indications of unreliability like evaluative modifiers, expressive intensifiers, and adjectives
that express the narrators attitudes, all of which feature prominently in
McEwans short stories and McGraths novels. All of these stylistic expressions of subjectivity indicate a high degree of emotional involvement
and they provide clues for the reader to process the narrator as unreliable
along the axis of facts/events, the axis of ethics/evaluation, and/or the axis
of knowledge/perception.82
As these examples may serve to show, the projection of an unreliable
narrator does not hinge upon the readers frames of reference or on conventions of reading alone, as cognitive approaches suggest, because texts
and those who design those texts, viz. (implied) authors, impose multiple
constraints on the ways in which narrators are processed. Thus the identification of an unreliable narrator does not depend solely on either the
readers intuition or ability of reading between the lines, as Chatman and
others want to make us believe, or on extratextual frames of reference like
the readers world-knowledge, cultural models, and standards of normality, as cognitive narratology maintains. While the latter, just like psychonarratology83, has provided important new insights into how texts and
narrators are processed and into the frames involved in the readingprocess, rhetorical approaches to narrative remind us that the projection of
an unreliable narrator, far from being hit or miss, presupposes the existence of a creative agent who furnishes the text and the narrator with a
wide range of explicit signals and inference invitations in order to draw
readers attention to a narrators unwitting self-exposure and unreliability.
3. Reconceptualizing the History of Unreliable Narration

Given the foregoing theoretical underpinnings, the next section will provide a brief outline of the history of unreliable narration in British prose
fiction from the end of the eighteenth century to the present. What needs
to be emphasized at the outset, however, is that, in the framework of an article, more than a rough outline of the development of unreliable narration
cannot be offered. The focus will be on tracing some points of transition
and exemplary novels that provide cornerstones in the as yet unwritten
82
83
See Phelan/Martin (1999).

Bortolussi/Dixon (2003).

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57
history of the subject. The following remarks will have to be provisional

for the simple reason that there are a number of articles on individual authors, but no general overview of the subject is currently available. In a
nutshell, the history of the unreliable narrator has yet to be written.
The history of the unreliable narrator does not begin with modern fiction, but rather goes back to the end of the eighteenth century. It is not,
however, in the famous works of the major eighteenth-century novelists
like Defoe, Richardson and Fielding that unreliable narration originates.
One has no reason, for instance, for questioning the reliability of Defoes
narrators despite the fact that their memory is sometimes faulty and that
their accounts contain the occasional inconsistency. Fieldings authorial
narrators are even less suspect, though their use of verbal irony is very
impressive. Some recent commentators have suggested that the issue of
unreliability is at least implicitly brought to the fore by the multiperspectival form of Richardsons epistolary novels. But although it is certainly
true that epistolary fiction tends to lay bare the subjective basis of all cognition, the general effect is quite different from what is known as unreliable narration. The same holds true for Tobias Smolletts The Expedition
of Humphry Clinker. Smolletts novel exposes the idiosyncrasies of the
individual letter-writers, without directly participating in what McKeon
has called the undeniable turn toward extreme scepticism84 in the second half of the eighteenth century. In sum, Defoe, Richardson and
Smollett, like most other eighteenth-century novelists, sought to establish,
rather than undermine, their narrators reliability. And even Sternes
highly eccentric first-person narrators are ultimately quite reliable and
honest, since their whimsicalities can readily be put down to their personal
hobby-horses and good nature, and since their accounts neither entail an
erroneous representation of the fictional facts nor a blatantly wrong assessment of them.
One of the earliest instances in British fiction of a full-fledged unreliable narrator is to be found in a novel that has received only little critical
attention to date, namely in Maria Edgeworths Castle Rackrent, published in 1800. The novel is told by a muddleheaded and incredibly naive
servant, aptly named Thady Quirk. His very quirky account of the history
of the Rackrents, a dissolute Irish family, reveals that his sense of family
honour and loyalty not only borders on the absurd, but also distorts his
84
McKeon (1987: 361).

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chronicle of what he believes to be an illustrious family. Internal inconsistencies in the narrators discourse abound. They result from Thadys
prejudices in favour of the Rackrents and from his casuistic reasoning,
which turns him into the butt of the irony. His quirky reasoning unwittingly reveals him to be an impressionable simpleton, as the following two
examples may illustrate: Sir Patrick is said also to be the inventor of
raspberry whiskey, which is very likely, as nobody has ever appeared to
dispute it with him.85 The fact that Sir Murtagh revels in excessive litigation, that he had once sixteen suits pending at a time, is proof enough
for Thady that he was a very learned man in the law.86 Castle Rackrent
certainly provides a cornerstone in the history of unreliable narration inasmuch as it sets out to destroy the readers expectations of narrative reliability, as Solomon rightly observes. 87
In the nineteenth-century British novel, unreliable narration is still very
much the exception rather than the rule. One might hazard the suggestion
that the scarcity of unreliable narrators in the Victorian novel may at least
partly be attributed to the fact that the epistemological premises which unreliable narration calls into question were still generally accepted. Most
Victorian novelists proceeded from the assumption that an objective view
of the world, of others, and of oneself can be attained. On the whole, the
realist novel added little to the technique known as unreliable narration
except for works cast in the comic mould of a fictional autobiography.88
But even such a comic fictional autobiography as William Makepeace
Thackerays The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq., published in 1844, does
not really challenge these notions, though the I-as-protagonist of this
novel is a paradigmatic unreliable narrator. The novel not only abounds in
internal contradictions, but the fictional editor of these memoirs also repeatedly draws the readers attention to them. The narrator is, however,
clearly recognizable as a specific type of literary character, namely the
type known as miles gloriosus or braggart. The narrator keeps saying I
hate bragging, but I cannot help saying89, thereby unwittingly exposing
his vanity, egotism, and delusions. Just before the reader gets to the conclusion, the editor once again interferes, informing the reader with charac
85
86
87
88
89
Edgeworth (1980: 10).

Ibid.: 1516.
Solomon (1972: 72).
Cp. Riggan (1981: 28).
Thackeray (1984: 70).

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teristic irony that the honourable subject of these Memoirs has never told
the whole truth regarding himself, and, as his career comes to a close, perhaps is less to be relied on than ever.90 Ultimately, then, Barry Lyndon,
just like the vast majority of Victorian novels, does not call into doubt the
notion that human beings are principally taken to be capable of providing
veracious accounts of events and of others.
There are, however, some noteworthy examples of unreliable narration, the most notorious of which is certainly Emily Bronts Wuthering
Heights (1847). This novel in fact features two unreliable narrators, Mr.
Lockwood and Nelly Dean. The juxtaposition of their accounts not only
reveals a number of judgmental errors in Lockwoods shallow description,
but also calls into doubt the normative standards that he represents. While
the main reasons for his unreliability are his lack of knowledge and his
normative view of the world, Nelly Deans strong bias results from a high
degree of emotional involvement, from her divided loyalties, and from her
overt partiality. With its juxtaposition of two unreliable narrators, Wuthering Heights seriously undermines the assumption that an objective or authoritative version of events can in principle be established.
Another notable example of unreliable narration in nineteenth-century
British fiction would be James Hoggs The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). As Niederhoff persuasively argues, the
unreliability of Hoggs narrator is clearly signposted in at least two ways:
by a trustworthy editorial introduction that depicts some of the same
events as the principal narrator and thus sets off his unreliability; and by
the behaviour of the narrator as a character in the story he is a liar, hypocrite, madman, and murderer.91
The unreliable narrator fully comes into his, or rather its, own in British literature in what is known as the transition from late Victorian to
modern fiction. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century novel
one finds a broad range of individualized first-person narrators whose reliability the reader has reasons to suspect. It is well known who the key
author in this context is, namely Henry James. Two of the most famous of
his works that feature unreliable narrators are The Aspern Papers (1888)
and The Turn of the Screw (1898). Neither the equally deceiving and
90
91
Ibid.: 278.
Niederhoff (1994: 245f.).

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self-deceived narrator-scholar in The Aspern Papers nor the inconscient

governess in The Turn of the Screw are reliable reporters of the events.
In comparison to the situation with Jamess narrative techniques, the
use of unreliable narrators in the works of a number of other lateVictorian and modernist novelists has received relatively little attention to
date. A case in point is the role of the unreliable narrator in Ford Madox
Fords novel The Good Soldier (1915), which is told by the gullible John
Dowell. Just as in the case of many other unreliable narrators in modernist
fiction, the real focus of the novel is not on the past events as such but on
the narrators surmises about what has happened, on his ignorance and
misapprehension. This is also true for many of Conrads novels, of course,
particularly Lord Jim (1899) and Under Western Eyes (1910). In addition,
the use of the unreliable narrator in several of Robert Louis Stevensons
novels and tales has only recently received the attention it deserves, both
for the complex narrative structure of Stevensons works and for their
characteristic high degree of epistemological scepticism. The different
uses of the unreliable narrator in Fords and Conrads novels would certainly also merit close attention and deserve to be explored in the light of
recent work done in narratology, cognitive theory, and cultural studies.
Since the end of the Second World War, the unreliable narrator has enjoyed unprecedented popularity in both the English novel and short story.
Many contemporary authors no longer portray accepted norms of social
relationship and human behaviour but rather focus on various forms of
deviance. The use of first-person narrators in contemporary British fiction,
however, often differs significantly from previous instances of unreliable
narration. Contemporary British fiction often calls into question conventional notions of unreliable narration. Wall has demonstrated that Kazuo
Ishiguros The Remains of the Day (1989) not only challenges our usual
definition of an unreliable narrator, but also deconstructs the notion of
truth, and consequently questions both reliable and unreliable narration
and the distinctions we make between them.92 The same point could be
made with respect to many other post-war novels that employ first-person
narrators, for instance William Goldings Free Fall (1959), Nigel Williams Star Turn (1985), William Boyds The New Confessions (1987),
and Jeanette Wintersons Sexing the Cherry (1989). Moreover, Graham
Swifts short stories and novels both foreground and challenge the prob
92
Wall (1994: 18, 23).

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61
lematic notions of truth, objectivity, and reliability on which realist theories of unreliable narration are based. Some of the stories in Swifts collection Learning to Swim and other Stories, e.g. Seraglio, The Hypochondriac, and The Hotel, display a very high degree of epistemological scepticism, something they share with the novels of such writers as
John Fowles, Nigel Williams, or Jeanette Winterson.
The fact that many recent novels and short stories challenge the usual
definitions of an unreliable narrator confirms Walls view that we perhaps
need to re-think entirely our notion that unreliable narrators give an inaccurate version of events and that our task is to figure out what really happened.93 In reference to one of Beckett narrators, Rabinovitz argues that
the unreliable narrative in Murphy is in an ultimate sense not at all unreliable; for it depicts, in a truthful way, the illusions and deceptions of the
outer world.94 With regard to many contemporary British novels, the focus of the argument seems to have shifted in the opposite direction: It
could equally be argued that the unreliable narrators in novels like Julian
Barnes Talking It Over (1991), Ishiguros The Remains of the Day, or
Swifts The Sweet-Shop Owner (1981) are ultimately not at all unreliable;
the stories they tell may not provide objective renderings of the events,
but they depict, in a very truthful way, the illusions and self-deceptions of
the narrators themselves.
Despite its brevity this sketch of the history of the unreliable narrator
in British fiction may serve to show that the unreliable narrator is by no
means an ahistorical phenomenon. Rather, just like other narrative techniques, it should be seen as a formal response to broader cultural developments. Formal properties of novels like unreliable narration, it can be
argued, reflect both the understanding of reality and subjectivity and the
moral concerns and unspoken epistemological assumptions of a given period. The almost steady rise of the unreliable narrator since the end of the
eighteenth century suggests that there is indeed a close connection between the development of this narrative technique and the changing notions of subjectivity. Even such a brief outline of the history of the unreliable narrator supports Walls recent hypothesis that changes in how sub-
93
94
Ibid.: 37.
Rabinovitz (1983: 67).

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jectivity is viewed will inevitably be reflected in the way reliable or unreliable narration is presented.95
4. Reconceptualizing the Generic Scope of Unreliable Narration

Another area of research that is in dire need of reconceptualization is the
generic scope of unreliable narration. So far the focus of the discussion of
unreliable narration not just in the present article, but in literary studies
at large has been almost exclusively on narrative fiction.96 The generic
scope of the phenomenon in question, however, extends far beyond firstperson narrators in novels or short stories. The following brief outline of
the broader generic scope of unreliable narration will have to be provisional and programmatic because no general overview of the subject is
currently available.
Just as the history of unreliable narration does not begin with modern
fiction, the use of unreliable narrators is also not confined to narrative fiction; it rather extends to a wider range of genres. The subgenres known as
the dramatic monologue97 and the memory play98 are cases in point. These
hybrid genres cut across established generic categories of poetry, drama,
and narrative: with its limitation to a single speaker usually revealing key
episodes of his or her life, the dramatic monologue combines poetic diction with dramatic presentation and story-telling elements; similarly, the
memory play is a type of drama with distinct narrative features.
The dramatic monologues of nineteenth-century English literature provide ample evidence of the use of unreliable narration in poetry. There are
many noteworthy examples of such unreliable narration in Victorian
poetry, the most famous of which are probably Brownings My Last
Duchess (1842) and Tennysons Maud: A Monodrama (1855). Both
structurally and thematically, these poems display almost all of the features of unreliable narration that have been discussed: they involve firstperson speakers whose disturbed perceptions, egotistic personalities, and
problematic value-systems lead the reader to question the accuracy of
their accounts. In Maud the monologists strong bias results from a high
95
96
97
98
Wall (1994: 22).

Cf. Jahn (1998).
Cf. Bennett (1987).
Cf. Brunkhorst (1980).

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degree of emotional involvement, from his divided loyalties, and from his
overt partiality. Similarly, the speaker of Brownings The Bishop Orders
his Tomb at Saint Praxeds Church (1845) is an unreliable narrator if
ever there was one. The bishop unwittingly reveals that he has fathered
several bastards and that even on his deathbed he is thinking of nothing
other than material wealth and sexual joy. The study of a host of other
Victorian poems e.g. Brownings Porphyrias Lover (1836) and John
Davidsons The Testament of an Empire-Builder (1902) and of many
of Rudyard Kiplings Barrack-Room Ballads would also benefit from the
application of the conceptual tools developed for the analysis of unreliable
narration.
The same is true for the memory play, which typically features an unreliable first-person narrator. Many post-war English plays prove those
critics and theorists wrong who, like Elam, maintain that drama is without narratorial mediation.99 But the study of both unreliable narration and
point of view or focalisation in drama has received hardly any attention to
date. In the only available article on the subject, Brian Richardson has
convincingly shown that the deployment of narratorial mediation and the
appearance of unreliability in plays call for the kind of analysis of point
of view usually reserved for modern fiction.100
Such memory plays as Tom Stoppards Travesties (1974) and Peter
Shaffers Amadeus (1979), which feature Henry Carr and Antonio Salieri
respectively as narrators, demonstrate that post-war English playwrights
make very subtle use of unreliable narration. In the stage directions of his
play, Stoppard explicitly draws attention to Carrs unreliability, something
which results from the old mans poor memory and his reactionary prejudices: the scene (and most of the play) is under the erratic control of Old
Carrs memory, which is not notably reliable, and also of his various
prejudices and delusions.101 The main reasons for Salieris unreliability
are his limited knowledge, the high degree of his emotional involvement,
and his problematic value-system. In Amadeus dramatic irony results primarily from the tension between what the audience sees and what Salieri
describes, while Travesties contains a wide range of textual clues to Carrs
unreliability. Other examples of plays which violate naturalistic stage
99
Elam (1980: 111).

Richardson (1988: 194).
101
Stoppard (1974: 27).
100

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conventions by relying on unreliable narration would be Samuel Becketts

Krapps Last Tape (1958) and Harold Pinters Landscape (1968), the latter being composed of alternating and independent acts of narration spoken by two characters.
Like many contemporary English novels, these memory plays call into
question conventional notions of unreliable narration, because they too
challenge realist notions of truth and objectivity, with similar consequences as could be observed for contemporary British fiction. Despite its
brevity this sketch of the generic scope of unreliable narration may serve
to show that this feature is not confined to narrative fiction. Rather, such
hybrid subgenres as the dramatic monologue and the memory play demonstrate that unreliable narration appears cross-generically. But the use of
unreliable narration in genres other than narrative fiction has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves.
It needs to be emphasized that narrative theory could and should be
applied to both narration in drama102 and to such hybrid genres as the dramatic monologue and the ballad. The application of narrative theory to
genres other than fiction could open up new directions of research in an
age of literature that has, after all, become noted for the blurring of genre
distinctions. Since both the crossing of the boundaries between fiction,
drama, and poetry, and the phenomenon that has come to be known as intermediality have become hallmarks of contemporary English literature,
literary studies would arguably stand to gain by applying the categories
and methods developed for the study of one genre (e.g. narrative fiction)
to the study of other genres and media. If criticism and theory want to
keep up with such innovative literary developments as the blurring of generic boundary lines, critics should not forget the insights which the
cross-generic application of genre-specific theories affords.
5. Epilogue: Conclusions and Areas for Further Research

To sum up, by synthesizing concepts and ideas from both cognitive and
rhetorical approaches, this article has attempted to advance our understanding of unreliable narration and of how readers negotiate and process
texts featuring an unreliable narrator, creating a somewhat more detailed
(though by no means exhaustive) inventory of the presuppositions, frames
102
Cf. Richardson (1988: 198); Nnning/Sommer (2006, 2008).

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of reference, and textual signals involved in the projection of unreliable

narrators. If the rhetorical approach with its emphasis on the recursive relations among (implied) author, textual phenomena or signals, and reader
response encompasses the cognitive narratologists emphasis just on
reader and text, then the cognitive approach can nevertheless provide
more finely nuanced tools for recognizing an unreliable narrator. Though
the suggested synthesis of the two approaches still leaves several questions unanswered (e.g. What is the respective degree of importance of the
various items in the inventory outlined above? Are the presuppositions,
goals, and analytic tools of the two approaches really compatible?), it can
arguably yield new insights into unreliable narration and open up productive avenues of inquiry for narrative theory, the more so because it is just
as relevant for the ways in which e.g. literary characters, events, and plots
are constructed (by implied authors) and processed (by readers) and for
the role conceptual schema play on the production and reception side.
Though agreement has been reached that ascriptions of unreliability
involve the recursive relationship among the author, whether implied or
not, textual phenomena, and reader response, accounts of unreliable narration still differ significantly with regard to the respective degree of importance they attribute to each of these three factors. While cognitive narratologists single out reader response and the cultural frameworks readers
bring to texts as the most important basis for detecting unreliability, narrative theorists working in the tradition of rhetorical approaches to narrative
have redressed the balance. Most theorists agree, however, that to determine a narrators unreliability one need not rely merely on intuitive judgments, because a broad range of definable signals provides clues to gauging a narrators unreliability. These include both textual data and the
readers pre-existing conceptual knowledge of the world and standards of
normality. In the end it is both the structure and norms established by the
respective work itself and designed by an authorial agency, and the
readers knowledge, psychological disposition, and system of norms and
values that provide the ultimate guidelines for deciding whether a narrator
is judged to be reliable or not.
The suggested synthesis of cognitive and rhetorical approaches is
chiefly offered as a means to rethink, and to stimulate further debate on,
the intricate problem of explaining how readers and critics intuitively consider narrators to be instances of unreliable narration. Much more work,
however, needs to be done if we want to come to terms with the complex
set of narrative strategies that ever since the days of Booth have been sub-

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sumed under the wide umbrella of the term unreliable narration. Despite
the productiveness of the critical industry, the question of unreliable narration is still a very fertile area of investigation. There are a number of
important issues surrounding the notion of unreliable narration, for instance, which have yet to be adequately explored. Though this article will
not be able to resolve them, it might at least pinpoint them, stimulating
further research and discussion.
First of all, cognitive accounts of unreliable narration, including the
one outlined above, arguably need to be further developed. A systematic
exploration of the cognitive processes which result in the projection of unreliable narrators in the first place has yet to be carried out. We need to
know a lot more, for instance, about what Bortolussi and Dixon have
called inference invitations103, i. e. the range of signs and signals with
which the implied author has endowed the story and which invite the
reader to make inferences pertaining to the narrators potential (un-)reliability beyond what is stated in the text.
Another unresolved issue concerns the questions of whether it makes
sense to conceive of focalizers as unreliable. What is at stake is not
whether unreliable focalization or fallible filtration exists, but what we
gain when we conceive of focalizers as fallible or unreliable. Manfred
Jahn (1998) and Christoph Schubert (2005) have recently addressed this
issue, without, however, providing full-fledged theories of unreliable focalization, or fallible filtration.
Third, in addition to a cognitive turn in the theory of unreliable narration, Bruno Zerweck has called for a second fundamental paradigm shift,
one toward greater historicity and cultural awareness104 in an article published in Style. Like some narrative theorists before him105, he argues that,
because unreliability is the effect of interpretive strategies, it is culturally
and historically variable. Therefore, the whole notion of unreliability
needs to be radically historicized: in their attempt to gauge a narrators potential degree and kind of unreliability, readers (and critics) always draw
on such extratextual frames of reference as norms and values, which are
themselves subject to historical change. In short, both the history of the
development of the narrative technique known as unreliable narration
103
Bortolussi/Dixon (2003: 8081).

Zerweck (2001: 151).
105
V. Nnning (1998); A. Nnning (1997).
104

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and the history of readers and critics projections of such narrators have
yet to be written.
In addition to such desiderata pertaining to the theory and history of
unreliable narration, the cognitive and historicized reconceptualization of
unreliable narration has far-reaching consequences for other central areas
of narrative theory concerned with unreliability. Though cognitive narrative theorists have at last begun to explore how decisions about a narrators unreliability are made106, the question of how these decisions affect
aspects of the narrated world has as yet scarcely been addressed. This curious oversight may largely be attributed to the well-known fact that the
general effect of what is called unreliable narration consists of redirecting
the readers attention from the level of the story to the speaker and of
foregrounding peculiarities of the narrators psychology. What has so far
been overlooked, however, is the equally well-known, but as yet completely unexplored fact that one effect of variations in interpretations of
(un-)reliability is potentially enormous variation in the narrative world
readers construct.
Focussing on the interactivity between modes of representation and
readers choices in constructing narrative worlds, future work in narrative
theory ought to take into consideration that decisions which readers make
about a narrators (un-)reliability tend to determine many aspects of the
represented world that readers (re-)construct. The question of whether a
given narrator is taken to be unreliable or not may, for instance, affect
characterization of the protagonists and their motives (e.g. in Ford Madox
Fords The Good Soldier, Nabokovs Lolita or Julian Barnes Talking It
Over), the setting that readers project (e.g. in Emily Bronts Wuthering
Heights or Martin Amiss Money) or even the whole narrative world that
readers construct (as in the case of Patrick McGraths neo-gothic novel
The Grotesque, Will Selfs Great Apes, and Chuck Palahniuks apocalyptic novel Fight Club). In the case of Fight Club, for example, the reader is
offered the following choice: if the reader decides that the narrator is awful and perverse, but otherwise factually reliable he or she will assume
that the narrator provides a sober and factually veracious account of the
most egregious or horrible events, which, from his point of view, are
hardly noteworthy. Once the reader realizes, however, that the narrator is
a schizophrenic maniac, he or she will (re-)construct a completely differ
106
Jahn (1997, 1999).

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ent narrative world, consisting of nothing but figments of the narrators

deranged imagination.
What is needed, therefore, is a more systematic exploration of the relation between readers identification of elements in the narrative discourse
(including decisions about a narrators unreliability) and the story or
represented world that readers project. The six different types of unreliability, for instance, which Phelan and Martin have distinguished offer the
reader quite different degrees of latitude as far as the projection of diverging story worlds is concerned. An alliance between narratology and possible worlds theory could thus be an important force in the current cognitive
reconceptualization of narrative theory, opening up productive new possibilities for the relation between indeterminacies on the level of discourse
or narrative transmission and the represented worlds on the level of the
story, which are projected by the reader.
Let me conclude with a few brief indications of some of the new territories to be explored that are opened up by such a cognitive framework for
the analysis of unreliable narration. First, it can bridge the gap that has
separated narratology and cognitive theory for much too long, to the detriment of narratological inquiry, one might add. Second, such a cognitive
reconceptualization can be usefully applied in the as yet unwritten narratological history of the development of unreliable narration. Third, a cognitive theory of unreliable narration may be useful for understanding how
readers make sense of a narrative as a whole. Lastly, only if we take into
consideration both the cognitive strategies and the culturally accepted
models and frames that readers and critics, usually unconsciously, deploy
when they naturalize texts in terms of unreliable narration will we be in a
position to assess possible links between the historically variable notions
of subjectivity and the equally changing uses of what has come to be
known as the unreliable narrator.
In addition to the unresolved theoretical issues surrounding unreliable
narration outlined above, there are at least six important areas which have
yet to be adequately explored. One of them is the development of an exhaustive and full-fledged theory of unreliable narration integrating the insights recently provided by cognitive and rhetorical narrative theorists.
Second, what is needed is a more subtle and systematic account of the
clues to unreliable narration, including more sophisticated analyses of the
interplay between textual data and interpretive choices. Third, the different uses of the unreliable narrator in the works of both contemporary novelists and authors from earlier periods, and the ways in which they reflect

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or respond to changing cultural discourses, are just waiting to be explored.

Fourth, the history of the development of the narrative technique known
as unreliable narration has yet to be written because no one has dared to
provide an historical overview spanning the period from the eighteenth
century to the twentieth.107
Fifth, since the generic scope of unreliable narration has as yet neither
been properly defined nor even gauged, unreliability across different genres, media, and disciplines provides a highly fertile area of research. A
small number of articles on the subject notwithstanding108, the use of the
unreliable narrator in genres other than narrative fiction for instance in
dramatic genres like the memory play or in the dramatic monologue as
well as in other media and domains (including law and politics) deserves
more attention than it has hitherto been given. Lastly, taking a new look at
the development of narrative techniques like unreliable narration and of
the history of the reception of individual unreliable narrators109 could be
an important force in the current attempts to historicize narrative theory.
In short, much more work needs to be done if we want to come to
terms with the complex set of narrative strategies and reading processes
that ever since the good old days of Wayne C. Booth have been subsumed
under the wide umbrella of the term unreliable narration. The proposed
synthesis of cognitive narratology and rhetorical approaches to unreliable
narration is not, however, meant to be the last word on the unreliable narrator but rather a strategic move towards a better understanding of a very
complex phenomenon. If we are to make sense of unreliable narration at
all, we would be wise neither to rely solely on cognitive explanations,
helpful and sophisticated as they may be, nor to be satisfied with rhetorical accounts based on the implied author, but instead take into consideration both the unacknowledged standards and frames of reference according to which readers and critics think they recognize an unreliable narrator
when they see one, and the authors agency and the textual signals of unreliability. Whether the end of all our exploring will really be to arrive
where we started may be open to debate, but the proposed synthesis of
cognitive and rhetorical approaches may arguably help us to really know
the place of unreliable narration for the first time and to be able to provide
107
For brief sketches see Nnning (1997a); Zerweck (2001).

See Bennett (1987); Richardson (1988).
109
See V. Nnning (2004).
108

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more adequate and refined accounts of the roles of the reader, the text, and
the (implied) author.
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ANSGAR NNNING

Reconceptualizing the Theory, History and Generic Scope of

0. Prologue: Areas of Reconceptualization and Goals of the Article

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

1. Reconceptualizing Conventional Theories

Culler (1975), Fludernik (1996).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Prince (1987: 101).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

relating it to a concept that is itself ill-defined and paradoxical. Curiously

Bal (1981b: 209).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Toolan (1988: 78).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Bal (1981a: 42).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

commentary and judgments: An unreliable narrator [...] is one whose

Rimmon-Kenan (1983: 100).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

bother to enlighten the uninitiated as to how the hand of the omnipresent

Cf. Booth (1961: 255).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Wall (1994: 23).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

readers bring to the text. If we are to make sense of unreliable narration at

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

assumption that an authoritative version of events36 can in principle be

Wall (1994: 37).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Fludernik (1993: 349).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

The trouble with seemingly self-explanatory yardsticks like normal

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

narration frequently depends on the linguistic and stylistic evocation of a

Cp. Fludernik (1993: 280).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Noticing and clarifying those unacknowledged frames of reference

Cf. Yacobi (1987).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Cf. Amors (1991).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

2. Reconceptualizing the Textual Clues and Frames of Reference

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

sumption that someone designed the inconsistency as a signal of unreliability.66

Cf. Phelan (2005: 48).

Bereitgestellt von | Universitaet Wuppertal

Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

wholes.70 While acknowledging that the same textual phenomena can

Phelan (2005: 49)