Narrative unreliability in the twentieth-century first-person novel / edited by Elke D'hoker, Gunther Martens.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

D'hoker, Elke.

Martens, Gunther, 1976-

Series:

Narratologia.

Narratologia

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Fiction.

First person narrative--History and criticism.

First person narrative.

Truthfulness and falsehood in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (338p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : De Gruyter, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This volume deals with the occurrence and development of unreliable first-person narration in twentieth century Western literature. The different articles in this collection approach this topic both from the angle of literary theory and through a detailed reading of literary texts. By addressing questions concerning the functions, characteristics and types of unreliability, this collection contributes to the current theoretical debate about unreliable narration. At the same time, the collection highlights the different uses to which unreliability has been put in different contexts, poetical traditions and literary movements. It does so by tracing the unreliable first-person narrator in a variety of texts from Dutch, German, American, British, French, Italian, Polish, Danish and Argentinean literature. In this way, this volume significantly extends the traditional 'canon' of narrative unreliability. This collection combines essays from some of the foremost theoreticians of unreliability (James Phelan, Ansgar Nünning) with essays from experts in different national traditions. The result is a collection that approaches the 'case' of narrative unreliability from a new and more varied perspective.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Estranging Unreliability, Bonding Unreliability, and the Ethics of Lolita

Reconceptualizing the Theory, History and Generic Scope of Unreliable Narration: Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches

Revising and Extending the Scope of the Rhetorical Approach to Unreliable Narration

Sincerity, Reliability and Other Ironies - Notes on Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Werfel, Weiss and Co. Unreliable Narration in Austrian Literature of the Interwar Period

Unreliability between Mimesis and Metaphor: The works of Kazuo Ishiguro

A Sophisticated Form of Lying: Hugo Claus and the Poetics of Unreliability

'Un Fou Raisonnant et Imaginant'. Madness, Unreliability and The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short

An Eye for an I. Telling as Reading in Bruno Schulz's Fiction

Didn't Know Any Better: Race and Unreliable Narration in "Low-Lands" (1960) by Thomas Pynchon

Unreliability in Italian Modernist Fiction: The Cases of Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello

"He" Who Knows Better Than "I": Reactivating Unreliable Narration in Philip Roth's Human Stain and Jean Echenoz' Nous trois

An Unreliable Narrator in an Unreliable World. Negotiating between Rhetorical Narratology, Cognitive Studies and Possible Worlds Theory

The Deconstruction of the First-Person Narrator in the French New Novel

First Person, Present Tense. Authorial Presence and Unreliable Narration in Simultaneous Narration

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9786611993214

9781281993212

1281993212

9783110209389

3110209381

OCLC:

476275671