•  Home
  • Library
  • DRO home
Submit research Contact DRO

DRO

Openly accessible

Writer-as-narrator: engaging the debate around the (un)reliable narrator in memoir and the personal essay

Freeman, Robin and Le Rossignol, Karen 2015, Writer-as-narrator: engaging the debate around the (un)reliable narrator in memoir and the personal essay, Text: journal of writing and writing programs, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 1-1.

Attached Files
Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads
freeman-writerasnarrator-2015.pdf Published version application/pdf 419.15KB 686

Title Writer-as-narrator: engaging the debate around the (un)reliable narrator in memoir and the personal essay
Author(s) Freeman, Robin
Le Rossignol, KarenORCID iD for Le Rossignol, Karen orcid.org/0000-0002-3826-1156
Journal name Text: journal of writing and writing programs
Volume number 19
Issue number 1
Start page 1
End page 1
Total pages 1
Publisher Australasian Association of Writing Programs
Place of publication Nathan, Qld.
Publication date 2015-04
ISSN 1327-9556
Keyword(s) first-person creative nonfiction
reliable narrator
writer-as-narrator
Summary Subjective and personal forms of nonfiction writing are enjoying exponential popularity in English language publishing currently, as an interested public engages with ‘true’ stories of society and culture. Yet a paradox exists at the centre of this form of writing. As readers, we want to know who the writer is and what she has to tell us. Yet as writers we use a persona, a constructed character, a narrator who is only partially the writer, to deliver the narrative. How is a writer able to convey ‘true’ stories that are inherently reliant on memory, within a constructed narrative persona?We find a ‘gap’ between the writer and the narrator/protagonist on the page, an empowered creative space in which composition occurs, facilitating a balance between the facts and lived experiences from which ‘true’ stories are crafted, and the acknowledged fallibility of human memory. While the gap between writer and writer-as-narrator provides an enabling space for creative composition, it also creates space for the perception of unreliability. The width of this gap, we argue, is crucial. Only if the gap is small, if writer and writer-as-narrator share a set of passionately held values, can the writer-as-narrator become a believable entity, satisfying the reader with the ‘truth’ of their story.
Notes Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright owner.
Language eng
Field of Research 190402 Creative Writing (incl Playwriting)
Socio Economic Objective 950104 The Creative Arts (incl. Graphics and Craft)
HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
Copyright notice ©2015, The Authors
Free to Read? Yes
Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30073546

Document type: Journal Article
Collections: Faculty of Arts and Education
School of Communication and Creative Arts
Open Access Collection
Related Links
Link Description
Connect to published version
Go to link with your DU access privileges
 
Connect to Elements publication management system
Go to link with your DU access privileges
 
Connect to link resolver
 
Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved.

Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in DRO. If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact drosupport@deakin.edu.au.

Versions
Version Filter Type
Citation counts: TR Web of Science Citation Count  Cited 0 times in TR Web of Science
Scopus Citation Count Cited 0 times in Scopus Google Scholar Search Google Scholar
Access Statistics: 1471 Abstract Views, 686 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics
Created: Fri, 29 May 2015, 13:41:48 EST

Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in DRO. If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact drosupport@deakin.edu.au.