SOURCE: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rjann/325S08POV
ENGLISH 325 LECTURE
POINTS OF VIEW
20 February 2008
Professor Rosemary Jann
1. Introduction
2. History of Attitudes toward Point of View (examples
of intrusive narrators)
3. Showing vs. Telling
4. A Short Digression on Irony
5. Conventional Classifications of Point of View
6. Varieties of 3rd Person Narration
7. Methods for Creating Filter
Conventional Classifications of Point of View
Point of view is conventionally classified according to the position
assumed by the narrating voice.
1. First-person narration: narrator uses the pronoun "I" and
is usually a participant in the action of the story.
First-person narrators are usually designated as "reliable" (the
reader can trust their perceptions of events) or as "naive" or "unreliable"
(the reader perceives or understands something other or something different
than the narrator; this discrepancy usually creates irony).
Second-person narration : narrator uses the pronoun "you,"
although this technique usually operates as a disguised version of first-person
narration.
Third-person narration: narrator uses the pronouns "he,"
"she," or "they." Third-person narrators do not participate
in the action of the story and are often further classified by how much access
they give us to the minds of the characters.