Narrative Cracks: Reconsidering Intentionality in Unreliable Narration in The Remains of the Day and The Moonstone

Year 2024, Issue: Special Issue: Wilkie Collins, 42 - 56, 28.01.2024

Sinem Oruç

https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.1418446

Abstract

Since Wayne Booth’s coinage of the term “unreliable narrator,” much critical ink has been spilled over the instances where the reliability of a narrator’s account is compromised, though without exploring the effects of the narrator’s intentional agency on unreliability. This study introduces the narratorial intent across the three levels of unreliable narration offered by Olson as a factor designating the disposition of a narrator and the gap between the implied reader and the narrator. With a rhetorical narratological approach that is in dialogue with cognitivist/constructivist approaches, the butler-narrators Stevens and Betteredge, from Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989) and from Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868) respectively, will be analyzed in terms of how the difference in their narratorial intent pertains to their being diametrically opposed unreliable narrators. It is claimed that the lack of intrinsic motivation distances Betteredge from the implied reader and makes him an untrustworthy narrator while strong narratorial intent and agency bonds Stevens’s audience to his narration and shows him as an unreliable, yet fallible, narrator.

Keywords

The Moonstone, The Remains of the Day, unreliable narration, rhetorical narratology, narratorial intent, narrative ethics

Anlatı Çatlakları: Günden Kalanlar ve Aytaşı Romanlarının Güvenilmez Anlatılarında Kasıtlılığın Yeniden Düşünülmesi

Abstract

Wayne Booth’un “güvenilmez anlatıcı” terimini ortaya atışından bu yana birçok çalışma bir anlatıcının güvenilirliğinden taviz verdiği durumlara odaklansa da anlatıcının anlatıya başlamadaki niyetinin güvenilirliğine olan etkisi pek araştırılmamıştır. Bu çalışma, Olson’un öne sürdüğü ve üç seviyeden oluşan güvenilmez anlatıcı çerçevesi kapsamında anlatıcı niyetini, anlatıcı özellikleri ve anlatıcının ima edilen okuyucu ile ilişkisi üzerinde belirleyici bir etmen olarak ele alır. Anlatıbilimin retorik yaklaşımlarının bilişsel/yapılandırmacı yaklaşımlarla kurduğu diyalog üzerinden, Kazuo Ishiguro’nun Günden Kalanlar (1989) ve Wilkie Collins’in Aytaşı (1868) romanlarının uşak-anlatıcıları Stevens ve Betteredge, anlatıcı niyetinde yaşadıkları ayrışmanın taban tabana zıt güvenilmez anlatıcılar olarak ortaya çıkmalarındaki etkisi açısından incelenecektir. İçsel motivasyon eksikliği Betteredge’i ima edilen okuyucudan uzaklaştırıp güvenmeye değmez bir anlatıcı konumuna yerleştirirken kuvvetli bir anlatıcı niyeti ve etkinliği, Stevens’ı ima edilen okuyucusuna yaklaştırır ve güvenilmez fakat yanılabilir bir anlatıcı olarak konumlandırır.

Keywords

Aytaşı, Günden Kalanlar, güvenilmez anlatı, retorik anlatı kuramı, anlatıcı niyeti, anlatı etiği

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