[lit-ideas] Re: nameless celebrities?
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:21:45 -0500
Judy wrote: you seem to be the world authority on unnamed persons!
____
There are undoubtedly billions of silent or unnamed people who know more
than I do about unnamed narrators. They have probably been busy with
other things today.
It is worth bringing up (what Henry James referred to as) "central
intelligence," where the narrator is omniscient with respect to the
overall external fictional situation, but is internally omniscient with
respect to the consciousness of one particular character.
This is almost like having an unnamed narrator, in that the central
intelligence of the novel is directly related to character X but not the
same as X, and so could be X's identical twin narrating from the
distance of years.
Someone who knows all the external events of a fiction and also the
intimate thoughts of one character is almost like a character, a
busybody friend of the family.
So maybe all novels that use this narrative technique could be
considered to employ an unnamed central character as narrator?
Best,
Y
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