“WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?”: CLASSIFYING UNRELIABLE NARRATORS IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
Date of Award
2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Humanities
First Advisor
Dimino, Andrea
Area of Concentration
English
Abstract
This thesis looks at unreliable narrators over the last 150 years and examines trends in how unreliable narrators have manifested over history. I establish my own classifications of unreliable narrators by using and furthering James Phelan’s definitions of the three functions of a reliable narrator (reporting, interpreting, and evaluating a storyworld for the reader) and his ideas of bonding and estranging unreliability (making the narrator more and less sympathetic for readers respectively). In Chapter One, I examine Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark On The Wall” (1921) and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) as examples of what I call “confused” narrators, which were especially prominent from the 1860s to the late 1930s. In Chapter Two, I use Kinbote from Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962) as a quintessential example of a “transgressive” narrator, which was popular from the late 1930s until the 1960s. In Chapter Three, I discuss how the narrator of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) is representative of “helpless” narrators, which have been popular since the 1970s. I approach this study from the perspective of rhetorical narrative theory, emphasizing the language of the texts and their effects on the reader. This thesis does not claim to be a perfect study of the subject of unreliable narrators, but hopes to promote broader examinations of unreliable narrators, especially considering their relevance to the contemporary social climate.
Recommended Citation
O'Neal, Erin Nicole, "“WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?”: CLASSIFYING UNRELIABLE NARRATORS IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES" (2017). Theses & ETDs. 5398.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/5398