Paper Summary:

This paper considers how given that the simplest definition of "narrator" is probably "one who tells a story", we must ask ourselves two things, how much information does the narrator have access to and how willing is s/he to give all of these facts to the reader. It examines how we assume that the most reliable of narrators is one who knows all the facts and tells them and attempts to show through an analysis of Homer's "Odyssey", James Hogg's "Private Memoirs" and "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" and the "General Prologue" to Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" that unfortunately, it is not quite that simple.

From the Paper:

"The omniscient narrator is able to fulfill at least the first of the conditions which we suppose make a narrator reliable; he knows all the facts. He is, in effect, the narrator-as-God, and, as such, is the complete antithesis of human narrators who appear as characters story they tell e.g. Telemachus and Odysseus, who narrate parts of The Odyssey for themselves. Human narrators, of course, are subject to human frailties. They can tell us everything they know, but they may not want to - and when they do, they can only tell it as they see it, from their own, unique point of view."

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