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This article is about the narrative mode. For other uses of "first person", see First person
(disambiguation).
First-person narrative is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time,
speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well
as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the writing.
The narrators explicitly refer to themselves using words and phrases involving "I" (referred to as the
first-person singular) and/or "we" (the first-person plural). This allows the reader or audience to see
the point of view (including opinions, thoughts, and feelings) only of the narrator, and no other
characters. In some stories, first-person narrators may refer to information they have heard from the
other characters, in order to try to deliver a larger point of view. Other stories may switch from one
narrator to another, allowing the reader or audience to experience the thoughts and feelings of more
than one character.
Contents [hide]
1 Forms
2 Point of view device
3 Styles

Languages

4 See also

Espaol

5 Bibliography

Franais

6 References

Italiano
Simple English

Forms

[edit]

Svenska
Trke

First-person narratives can appear in several forms: interior monologue, as in Fyodor Dostoevsky's
Notes from Underground; dramatic monologue, as in Albert Camus' The Fall; or explicitly, as in Mark
Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Point of view device

[edit]

Since the narrator is within the story, he or she may not have knowledge of all the events. For this
reason, first-person narrative is often used for detective fiction, so that the reader and narrator
uncover the case together. One traditional approach in this form of fiction is for the main detective's
principal assistant, the "Watson", to be the narrator: this derives from the character of Dr Watson in
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.
In the first-person-plural point of view, narrators tell the story using "we". That is, no individual
speaker is identified; the narrator is a member of a group that acts as a unit. The first-person-plural
point of view occurs rarely but can be used effectively, sometimes as a means to increase the
concentration on the character or characters the story is about. Examples: William Faulkner in A
Rose for Emily (Faulkner was an avid experimenter in using unusual points of view - see his Spotted
Horses, told in third person plural), Frederik Pohl in Man Plus, and more recently, Jeffrey Eugenides
in his novel The Virgin Suicides and Joshua Ferris in Then We Came to the End.
First-person narrators can also be multiple, as in Rynosuke Akutagawa's In a Grove (the source for
the movie Rashomon) and Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury. Each of these sources provides
different accounts of the same event, from the point of view of various first-person narrators.
The first-person narrator may be the principal character or one who closely observes the principal
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character (see Emily Bront's Wuthering Heights or F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, each
narrated by a minor character). These can be distinguished as "first person major" or "first person
minor" points of view.

Styles

[edit]

First-person narrative can tend towards a stream of consciousness, as in Marcel Proust's In Search
of Lost Time. The whole of the narrative can itself be presented as a false document, such as a
diary, in which the narrator makes explicit reference to the fact that he is writing or telling a story.
This is the case in Bram Stoker's Dracula. As a story unfolds, narrators may be more or less
conscious of themselves as telling a story, and their reasons for telling it, and the audience that they
believe they are addressing, also vary wildly. In extreme cases, a frame story presents the narrator
as a character in an outside story who begins to tell his own story, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
for example.
First person narrators are often unreliable narrators since a narrator might be impaired (as in The
Last Film of Emile Vico by Thomas Gavin, or Benjy in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury), lie (as in
The Quiet American by Graham Greene, or The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe), or
manipulate his or her own memories intentionally or not (as in The Remains of the Day by Kazuo
Ishiguro, or in Ken Keasey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Henry James discusses his
concerns about "the romantic privilege of the 'first person'" in his preface to The Ambassadors, calling
it "the darkest abyss of romance." [1][2]
One convoluted example of a multi-level narrative structure is Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of
Darkness, which has a double framework: an unidentified "I" (first person singular) narrator relates a
boating trip during which another character, Marlow, tells in the first person the story that comprises
the majority of the work. Even within this nested story, we are told that another character, Kurtz, told
Marlow a lengthy story; we are not, however, directly told anything about its content. Thus we have
an "I" narrator introducing a storyteller as "he" (Marlow), who talks about himself as "I" and introduces
another storyteller as "he" (Kurtz), who in turn presumably told his story from the perspective of "I".

See also

[edit]

First person (a disambiguation page)

Narrative mode
Second-person narrative

Bibliography

[edit]

(French) Franoise Barguillet, Le Roman au XVIIIe sicle, Paris: PUF Littratures, 1981, ISBN

2130368557;
(French) mile Benveniste, Problmes de linguistique gnrale, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, ISBN

2070293386;
(French) Belinda Cannone, Narrations de la vie intrieure, Paris: Klincksieck, 1998, ISBN

2911285158;
(French) Ren Dmoris, Le Roman la premire personne: du classicisme aux lumires, Paris:
A. Colin, 1975, ISBN 2600005250;
(French) Pierre Deshaies, Le Paysan parvenu comme roman la premire personne, [s.l.: s.n.],

1975;
(French) Batrice Didier, La Voix de Marianne. Essai sur Marivaux, Paris: Corti, 1987, ISBN

2714302297;
(French) Philippe Forest, Le Roman, le je, Nantes: Pleins feux, 2001, ISBN 2912567831;

R. A. Francis, The Abb Prvost's first-person narrators, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1993, ISBN
072940448X;
(French) Jean-Luc Jaccard, Manon Lescaut. Le Personage-romancier, Paris: Nizet, 1975, ISBN
2707804509;
(French) Annick Jugan, Les Variations du rcit dans La Vie de Marianne de Marivaux, Paris:

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First-person narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Klincksieck, 1978, ISBN 2252020881;

Marie-Paule Laden, Self-Imitation in the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton
University Press, 1987, ISBN 0691067058;
(French) Georges May, Le Dilemme du roman au XVIIIe sicle, 1715-1761, New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1963;

(French) Ulla Musarra-Schrder, Le Roman-mmories moderne: pour une typologie du rcit

la premire personne, prcd d'un modle narratologique et d'une tude du roman-mmoires

traditionnel de Daniel Defoe Gottfried Keller, Amsterdam: APA, Holland University Press, 1981,
ISBN 9030212365;
(French) Vivienne Mylne, The Eighteenth-Century French Novel, Techniques of illusion,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965, ISBN 0521238641;

(French) Valrie Raoul, Le Journal fictif dans le roman franais, Paris: Presses universitaires de

France, 1999, ISBN 2130496326;

(French) Michael Riffaterre, Essais de stylistique structurale, Paris: Flammarion, 1992, ISBN

2082101681;
(French) Jean Rousset, Forme et signification, Paris: Corti, 1962, ISBN 2714303560;
(French) Jean Rousset, Narcisse romancier: essai sur la premire personne dans le roman,

Paris: J. Corti, 1986, ISBN 2714301398;

English Showalter, Jr., The Evolution of the French Novel (16411782), Princeton, N. J.:
Princeton University Press, 1972, ISBN 0691062293;
Philip R. Stewart, Imitation and Illusion in the French Memoir-Novel, 1700-1750. The Art of MakeBelieve, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1969, ISBN 0300011490;
(French) Jean Sgard, LAbb Prvost: Labyrinthes de la mmoire, Paris: PUF, 1986, ISBN

2130392822;
(French) Loc Thommeret, La Mmoire cratrice. Essai sur l'criture de soi au XVIIIe sicle, Paris:

L'Harmattan, 2006, ISBN 9782296008267;

Martin Turnell, The Rise of the French novel, New York: New Directions, 1978, ISBN
0241101816;
Ira O. Wade, The Structure and Form of the French Enlightenment, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton
University Press, 1977, ISBN 0691052565;
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965,
ISBN 0520013174;
Arnold L. Weinstein, Fictions of the self, 1550-1800, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1981, ISBN 0691064482;
(French) Agnes Jane Whitfield, La Problmatique de la narration dans le roman qubcois la
premire personne depuis 1960, Ottawa: The National Library of Canada, 1983, ISBN
0315083271.

References

[edit]

1. ^ Goetz, William R. (1986). Henry James and the Darkest Abyss of Romance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press. ISBN0807112593.
2. ^ The Ambassadors (p. 11) on Project Gutenberg
v

Narrative

Character
Plot

Accessed 17 March 2007

[hide]

Antagonist/Archenemy Characterization Deuteragonist False protagonist Focal character

Foil character Protagonist Supporting character Tritagonist Viewpoint character
Climax Conflict Dnouement Dialogue Dramatic structure Exposition Falling action
Plot device Subplot Trope-Clich

Setting

Dystopia Fictional city Fictional country Fictional location Fictional universe Utopia

Theme

Leitmotif Moral Motif

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Style

Diction Figure of speech Imagery Literary technique Narrative mode Stylistic device
Suspension of disbelief Symbolism Tone

Form

Fable-Parable Fabliaux Fairy tale Flash story Folktale-Legend Hypertext Novel Novella
Play Poem Screenplay Short story List of narrative forms

Genre

Adventure Comic Crime Docufiction Epistolary Erotic Faction Fantasy Historical

Horror Magic realism Mystery Paranoid Philosophical Political Romance Saga Satire
Science Speculative Superhero Thriller Urban

Narrator
Tense

Alternating person First-person Second-person Third-person (Limited Objective

Omniscient Subjective) Stream of consciousness The narrative types of the narrator
Unreliable
Past tense Present tense Future tense

Medium

Screenwriting

Related

Audience Author Fiction writing Creative nonfiction Literary theory Narrative structure
Narratology Other narrative modes Rhetoric Storytelling
Literature portal

Categories: Narratology

Fiction

Style (fiction)

Point of view

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