Reconceptualizing the Theory and Generic Scope of Unreliable Narration

The paper argues that the concept "unreliable narrator" needs to be radically rethought because, as currently defined, it is terminologically imprecise and theoretically inadequate. The first part of the article is devoted to giving an assessment and critique of the standard notions of the unreliable narrator, arguing that the postulation of essentialized and anthropomorphized entities designated "unreliable narrator" and "implied author" ignore the complexity of the phenomena involved and stands in the way of a systematic exploration of the cognitive processes which result in the projection of unreliable narrators in the first place. The second part outlines a radical reconceptualization of unreliable narration. It is proposed that it would be more sensible to conceptualize the relevant phenomena in the context of frame theory as a projection by the reader who tries to resolve ambiguities and textual inconsistencies by attributing them to the narrator's "unreliability." In the context of frame theory, the reader's projection of "unreliable narrators" can be understood as an interpretive strategy or a cognitive process of the sort that has come to be known as "naturalization" (cf. Culler 1975; Fludernik 1993, 1996). A number of empirical frames of reference and literary models can be seen as standard modes of naturalization by means of which readers account for contradictions both within texts and between the world-model of texts and their empirical world-models. The final section gives a brief outline of the generic scope of unreliable narration, arguing that it is unjustifiable and counterproductive to limit the study of this phenomenon to narrative fictio