A Study On "Unreliable Narration"

Wayne Clayson Booth(1921-2005)proposed the theory of “Unreliable Narration” in his work The Rhetoric of Fiction in 1961.It has been the necessary basic conception of narratology of nearly half a century.However,a unified opinion has not been reached even after a long run of drastic argument in the past half a century in narrate field.This thesis tries to leverage Genealogy of Knowledge to make clear of the misreading in narration field and good and bad of those genres of Unreliable Narration base on the progression of this theory in recent half a century.Also,a totally new interpreter will be established from Perspectivism.This thesis can be divided into three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The generation and current state of Unreliable Narration is introduced in introduction.The main body is divided into five chapters: in the first chapter,the proposed of Unreliable Narration and its orientation.The research procession of Unreliable Narration of the rhetorical genre and the cognitive school are explained in the second and the third chapter respectively.In the second chapter,the research from the rhetorical genre is analyzed which point out that the distance type and distance degree of narrator and the implied writer is considered to be the criterion of Unreliable Narration.In the third chapter,we talk about that the cognitive school deconstruct the theory of rhetorical genre and its reconstruction process base on readers,also check its theory in specific text interpretation.In the forth chapter,we figure out of the difference of the Unreliable Narration and trustless narration on account of the confusion of these conceptions exists in current field.In the last chapter,we raise a new interpretation at the beginning of which the conversion of intellectuals in current society from lawmaker to explainer is introduced,in which Wellek’s Perspectivism is leveraged.At the end of this thesis,we look forward to the future of the Unreliable Narration.