The Unreliable Narrator
F05
Christopher Miller
Henry James considered viewpoint the key to the art of fiction. The best way to understand the problems and possibilities of the first-person viewpoint is by studying the art of the unreliable narrator. This reading/writing course focuses on the act of narration as an action in the story, and the narrator as a character—one whose dishonesty, insanity, obtusity, partiality, ignorance, misinformation, or self-deception casts doubt on his or her account. Readings include Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, James’s The Turn of the Screw, Ford’s The Good Soldier, Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Millhauser’s Edwin Mullhouse, and stories and poems by Browning, Poe, Sedaris, and others. Weekly writing assignments.