7/29/2019 An Inventory of Narrators

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An Inventory of Narrators

Term Meaning and Synonyms

Author/Writer Apparently, self-evident;

Implied author An author who uses the word I in a narrative

often seems different from the writer (- the person who may be describedon the dust jacket); even in fiction lacking reference to an authorial I, we may form a conception ofthe author based on the style and the manner of telling; most critics accept W. C. Booths suggestionthat whether overt or covert, we should refer to this persona as the implied author;

Authorial An implied author who refers to himself as I, tells a fictional storyNarrator in which he does not appear, although personal knowledge of the

characters may be implied; using the Greek for same and different homo, hetero , respectively -,outside and inside extra and intra G. Genette refers to the authorial narrative as extra-diegetic and hetro-diegetic outside narrator different from the character;

III personNarrator The writer refers to all characters in the III-rd person; it caninclude authorial narration, but it usually refers to a figure in which there is no reference to the I whowrites; In the latter sense it is also called figural narration(Stanzel);

I-st personNarrator The narrator-writer is also a character in the story, who may tell hisown story (I as protagonist G Genettes extradiegetichomodiegeticor someone elses I aswitness, or Ich-Erzahlung);

Implied authorvs narrator If an authorial narrator recounts a story, there is no apparentdifference between the implied author and the narrator; in the III-rd person/figural narration, sincethere is no reference to an I who writes, there is no linguistic way to distinguishthe implied authorfrom the narrator; in the I-st person fiction, the narrator is usually different in obvious ways fromthe person who did the writing; some critics claim they can discern an implied author behind the I-stperson narrator despite the lack of linguistic signs of differentiating the 2;

Embedded

Narrat-or/-ion A story told by a character in a story is embedded ; some critics referto it as metan-arration or hypo-narration;

Voice (G. Genette) the act of narrating the situation involving a teller and an audience -; morenarrowly defined, it answers the question Who speaks?; in American criticism, voice often refers tothe unique qualities in an authors works;