Typology of unreliable narrators in drama

Abstract

To date, there is a large number of works considering the figure of unreliable narrator in texts of epic prose, while we have not found a single work in Russian on the specifics of unreliable narrative in drama. The article focuses on staged narratives, i.e., the intra–textual narratives of the characters in dramatic texts. In addition to informing the reader about off-stage events, such narrative cues implicitly and explicitly express the speaker’s point of view and personality traits, including a distorted perception of reality, a tendency to deceitful writing, or an inability to adequately report events. The article offers the detailed typology of the category of unreliable narrator in drama. Differentiation is based on correlation of the nature of unreliability with one of three possible instances in a communicative act: the subject (narrator), the object (story) and the addressee. Within the types, special modifications are distinguished, each illustrated with episodes from the works of classical and modern Russian drama.