| As a central religious, ethnic, gender- and ideology-based authority continues to be questioned, many novelists, both experimental and mainstream, have eliminated the omniscient narrator. They do this in various ways, and not consistently among their works. The existence of absolute truth and authority, epitomized by the omniscient narrator, is simply not compatible with late-twentieth-century ideologies. However, since omniscience, as compared with first person narration, can give a narrator useful latitude, many writers have revised traditional omniscience rather than scrapping it.;My idea is that these works reflect late-twentieth-century privileging of a decentralized, secular society, in which the distinction between truths and fictions, between real and fantasy worlds, are hazy. They reflect a society in which, "truth," "fiction," and "world" are always either plural or used ironically. Thus, these authors' non-traditional works actually represent or mimic contemporary life, in form if not in content.;This paper will discuss the various modes that John Barth, John Fowles, Margaret Drabble, B. S. Johnson, J. P. Donleavy, Patrick McGrath, Charles Johnson, J. M. Coetzee, and Sherley Anne Williams employ to avoid omniscience. Their methods include use of the truth-telling "I;" introduction of a narrator who discusses the narrative as a physical text; who identifies himself or herself as the actual author; who intrudes discreetly, avoiding the first person; who directly addresses the reader; who sets up heterotopic zones; or who burlesques the omniscient voice. This paper will also consider various problematic "I's": those that alternate, for instance, between the first and the third person in the same work. Finally, this paper will consider revisionist novels: those which retell well-known tales, giving them a contemporary twist. While vouching for the basic veracity of the original fictional incidents, these revisionist tales purport to tell the real story through the eyes of narrators more trustworthy than those of previous works. |
