Dialogue - Special Issue "Unreliable Me: Constructing and Inventing the Self"
Wayne C. Booth, in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), coined the term unreliable narrator to discuss the “artificial authority” that we as readers assign the narrator that is telling us a story (4). The question, however, comes when the narrator withholds information, manipulates information, or outright disguises or hides the information to fulfill a particular purpose. Perhaps the narrator wishes their reader to believe a particular idea, or they do not want the reader to know something to maintain the image they are creating through their narration. Literature has always played with the concept of narration. From Cervantes to Poe to George R.R. Martin, readers experience narrators that are confused, obscured, illusive, and more.