Revisiting ‘Third-Person’ Narrative Unreliability. Wayne C. Booth and the Bases for an Inclusive Approach to Unreliable Narration

Abstract

Taking its cue from the critical treatment given to unreliable narration by Wayne C. Booth and his early followers, and in contrast to the claims often made in the field of authentication theory, this paper seeks to join the debate on “third-person” narrative unreliability by outlining an inclusive approach to this phenomenon in which the “person” parameter need not be a determining factor. To theorize and illustrate this approach, a methodological context is first developed by juxtaposing Genette’s revisionist stance on voice and perception with Booth’s 1961 dismissal of the vocal issue and his controversial assimilation of tellers and observers. Then Ryan’s dissenting views are addressed by identifying common ground between her idea of the impersonal narrator and the principles of inclusivity which precisely rest on the impersonating potential of that figure. Finally the inclusive conception of unreliability is shown at work in three Jamesian tales – “The Aspern Papers” (1888), “The Liar” (1888), and “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903) – whose different vocal options do not seem to immunize their narrators against charges of untrustworthiness.