Journal article

Publication year: 2001

Pages: 151-178

Journal: Style

Volume number: 35

Issue number: 1

ISSN: 0039-4238

Publisher: Penn State University Press

Abstract: 
The concept of 'unreliable narration' cannot be adequately explained in terms of text-centered and synchronic models or with recourse to the concept of the implied author. Thus, the recently developed cognitive narratological approach to the phenomenon of unreliability (which represents a first paradigm shift) has to be extended towards a historical 'cultural narratology'. Such a second paradigm shift--a historical and cutlural turn--goes beyond a synchronic and constructivist cognitive approach in the direction of a diachronic cultural-narratological theory of unreliable narration. The central thesis here rests upon the realization that, because unreliability is the effect of interpretive strategies, it is culturally and historically variable. It therefore reflects a number of prominent synchronic and diachronic developments within different cultural discourses. These discourses have at the same time 'produced' and been influenced by the notion and the use of unreliable narration in narrative literature over the last two centuries. After a brief sketch of the cognitive turn and its implications for our understanding of what exactly constitutes unreliable narration, four these highlight the central features and the minimal conditions of unreliable narrations and point out the necessity of historical and cultural turn in the study of narrative unreliability. They are followed by four diachronic these that illustrate how a history of unreliable narration would look.

Harvard Citation style: Zerweck, B. (2001) Historicizing unreliable narration: Unreliability and cultural discourse in narrative fiction, Style, 35(1), pp. 151-178

APA Citation style: Zerweck, B. (2001). Historicizing unreliable narration: Unreliability and cultural discourse in narrative fiction. Style. 35(1), 151-178.