English

Noun

unreliable narrator ‎(plural unreliable narrators)

1. (literary theory, hyphenated when used attributively) A narrating character or storyteller in a literary or other artistic work—such as a novel, play, song, or film—who provides inaccurate, misleading, conflicting, or otherwise questionable information to the reader or audience.
   • 1969, Charles A. Watkins, "Chaucer's Sweete Preest," ELH, vol. 36, no. 3 (Sep), p. 463:

     The Priest also places a moral barrier between himself and his tale by establishing himself as an "unreliable narrator" capable of deception and irony.

   • 2000 April 17, Richard Corliss, "A Yuppie's Killer Instinct" (film review of American Psycho), Time (retrieved 27 June 2007):

     Patrick, for all his brutal truth telling, is an unreliable narrator.

   • 2007 Sept. 16, Terrence Rafferty, "Cantabrigian Psycho" (book review of Engleby by Sebastian Faulks), New York Times (retrieved 16 March 2014):

     [F]or the rest of the book Faulks gets to indulge in the unreliable-narrator game of cunning ellipses and selective, gradual revelation.

Translations

References

• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Christopher Baldick, Oxford University Press, 1996. ("Unreliable narrator" at Oxford Reference Online, retrieved 28 June 2007.)