SOURCE: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rjann/325F08POV.htm

ENGLISH 325 LECTURE
POINTS OF VIEW
1October 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).

Examples: Poe, "Tell Tale Heart" Poe, "Cask of Amontillado"

Second-person narration : narrator uses the pronoun "you," although this technique usually operates as a disguised version of first-person narration.

Example: Johnson, "Moving Pictures"

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.

Further classifications of 3rd-person narration