Narrator’s Unreliability: Narrator with Respect to the Referent and Communicative Events

The article distinguishes between two types of unreliable narrators: relatively referentive and communicative events. This approach allows not only to assess the reasons for unreliability, but also to show at what level of narration the information coming from the narrator is deformed. The unreliability of the narrator of the fi rst type manifests itself in understatement, deliberate concealment of details signifi cant for the diegetic world, in the narrator’s concealment of episodes in the narration, in the refusal to verbalize a signifi cant event, in the description of a false event. The main narrative fi gure formalizing the unreliability of this type becomes paralipsis. The unreliability of the narrator in relation to the communicative event is manifested in the discrepancy between what is reported by the narrator and the unfolding plot, in the detection of focalization in the fi nal narration. Narrators of the second type can also be both reliable witnesses, but unreliable narrators because of their inability to evaluate referential events, in general, or because of the reasons revealed by the reader in the process of comprehending the text: due to mental peculiarities, physical inferiority and small age. The intrigue of such texts becomes the intrigue of the word (V.I. Tiupa). Unreliable narration is also possible at the level of several discourses: the subjects of speech tell their own version of the story or describe diff erent events at all. This typology allows us to show that works with diff erent types of unreliability are completed in diff erent modes of artistry: texts with unreliability in relation to the referent event belong to the dramatic or ironic mode of artistry. Works with unreliability in relation to the communicative event are completed in the comic modus of artistry. Unreliability at the level of several discourses is completed in the dramatic modus of artistry.