A narrator is, within any story (literary work, movie, play, verbal account, etc.), the non-fictional or fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the first person. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for story-telling of any kind. The others are the author and the audience; the latter called the "reader" when referring specifically to literature.
The author and the audience both inhabit the real world. It is the author's function to create the universe, people, and events within the story. It is the audience's function to understand and interpret the story. The narrator only exists within the world of the story (and only there—although in non-fiction the narrator and the author can share the same persona, since the real world and the world of the story may be the same) and present it in a way the audience can comprehend.
A narrator may tell the story from his or her own point of view (as a fictive entity) or from the point of view of one of the characters in the story. The act or process of telling the particulars of a story is referred to as narration. Along with exposition, argumentation, and description, narration (broadly defined) is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, narration is the fiction-writing mode whereby the narrator communicates directly to the reader.
The concept of the unreliable narrator (as opposed to "author") became more prominent with the rise of the novel in the 18th century. Until the late 19th century, literary criticism as an academic exercise dealt solely with poetry (including epic poems like the Iliad and Paradise Lost, and poetic drama like Shakespeare). Most poems did not have a narrator distinct from the author. But novels, with their immersive fictional worlds, created a problem, especially when the narrator's views differed significantly from those of the author.
Perspective, interpretive knowledge, focalization and structure are the narrator's characterisa viewpoint character is Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes stories. Almost all of the Sherlock Holmes collection is from his point of view.
Other articles related to "narrator, narrators":
... Crest of the Stars (Narrator) Case Closed The Last Wizard of the Century (Sergei Ovchinnikov) Sol Bianca The Legacy (Gyunter) Lost Chapter of the Stars Birth (Narrator) Banner of the Stars (Narrator ...
... It tells the story of a high-school aged narrator who meets a Gothic girl, Anna Cayne ... radio, various mix-CDs, and other erratic interests, Cayne eventually wins the heart of the narrator ... she goes missing, leaving only a dress on the ice and secret codes to help the narrator and the reader find out where she has gone ...
... A writer may choose to let several narrators tell the story from different points of view ... Then it is up to the reader to decide which narrator seems most reliable for each part of the story ... Dying is a prime example of the use of multiple narrators ...
... Each have faced difficulties in their adult lives, the brother (the narrator) having lost his fiance long ago, and the sister (Irene) having denied many suitors who sought her hand in ... After describing the estate and their morning routine of chores in great detail, the narrator develops their interests Irene knits clothing all day, unraveling her work the moment it does not please her ... The narrator explains that he collects French literature while he buys Irene wool, he visits bookstores, though each attempt is futile ...
... which involves the use of a non-credible or untrustworthy narrator ... This unreliability is often developed by the author to demonstrate that the narrator is psychologically unstable ... The narrator of Poe's Tell-Tale Heart, for example, has an enormous bias, is unknowledgeable, ignorant or childish, or is perhaps purposefully trying to deceive the audience ...