unreliable narrator
/ˌʌnɹəˌlaɪəb(ə)l ˈnɛˌɹeɪtɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.35 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
18
Letters
7
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A narrating character or storyteller in a story (such as a film, novel, play, or song) who provides conflicting, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise questionable information to the audience or reader.
Example Sentences
- "[page 158] For practical criticism probably the most important of these kinds of distance is that between the fallible or unreliable narrator and the implied author who carries the reader with him in judging the narrator. […] [page 159] Unreliable narrators thus differ markedly depending on how far and in what direction they depart from the author's norms; […]"
- "The Priest also places a moral barrier between himself and his tale by establishing himself as an "unreliable narrator" capable of deception and irony. Thus, through his habit of speaking equivocally, he can disavow responsibility for his frequently provocative words."
- "As a young and inexperienced observer, Meadows represents the unreliable narrator whose views are sometimes wrong; but he learns from his mistakes and grows in perceptiveness and wisdom as the novel progresses."
- "The unreliable narrator demonstrates how the spirit of the times colours the work of storytellers, and how they in turn help to shape that spirit. We can find unreliable narrators in the books of Agatha Christie and William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov and Mordecai Richler – and hundreds of other writers. It's one of the emblematic literary devices of the century."
- "[…] Patrick, for all his brutal truth telling, is an unreliable narrator. You see, he is mad—so mad, he probably committed the murders in his head. Which still makes him one sick yuppie."
- "[F]or the rest of the book [Sebastian] Faulks gets to indulge in the unreliable-narrator game of cunning ellipses and selective, gradual revelation."
Etymology
Apparently coined by the U.S. literary critic Wayne Clayson Booth (1921–2005) in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961): see the quotation.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌʌnɹəˌlaɪəb(ə)l ˈnɛˌɹeɪtɚ/
- British English: /(ˌ)ʌnɹɪˌlaɪəbl nəˈɹeɪtə/