First-Person Paralepsis as Narratorial Invention: Desiderio’s Impossible Knowledge, Reliability, and Narrative Authority

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the unnatural narration in Angela Carter’s novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and addresses the issue of how to make sense of it. Drawing upon unnatural narratology, it examines the first-person narrator Desiderio’s paralepsis, i.e. how he violates the mimetic rules of first-person narration by presenting knowledge that should be inaccessible to him. In terms of interpretation, the study first evaluates two options – the naturalizing one that reads Desiderio as an unreliable narrator and the unnaturalizing one that foregrounds the nonrepresentative nature of the narrative – and identifies their respective deficiencies. It further proposes a form of naturalization that sees first-person narration as modeled on the genre of novel and attributes Desiderio’s paralepsis to his narratorial invention. It is argued that in coming to terms with the narrator’s omniscient qualities, we should duly consider his characterological motivation and overall performance of narrative authority. Desiderio’s assumption of competencies that he does not properly have in fact reflects a desire for control and mastery over his life.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In general, the unnaturalness in narratives can be approached from three aspects: unnatural storyworlds, unnatural acts of narration, and unnatural minds (Alber et al., “Unnatural Narratives” 116).

2. A special issue of Poetics Today (2018, Volume 39, Number 3) invites scholars from both camps to discuss the convergences and tensions concerning issues central to debates in narrative studies.

3. For more on naturalizing readings or cognitive readings, see Monika Fludernik (“Natural Narratology”; “New Wine”).

4. While Phelan and Nielsen make sense of first-person omniscient narration within different frameworks, they both make a distinction between character function and narrator function. See Heinze (287).

5. For a similar analysis, see Filippo Pennacchio’s discussion on the paralepsis in Middlesex (26–27).

6. Heinze (280) points out that this is the case for many first-person narrators with exceptional knowledge.

7. According to Booth, unreliability occurs when a narrator does not speak for or act in accordance with the norms of the work, or the implied author’s norms, and this distance can be moral, intellectual, physical or temporal (155–59). The concept “the implied author” is debatable (see Phelan, Living 38–49), and in this study, I follow Phelan’s definition that “the implied author is a streamlined version of the real author, an actual or purported subset of the real author’s capacities, traits, attitudes, beliefs, values, and other properties that play an active role in the construction of the particular text” (Living 45; original emphasis).

8. The authorial audience is the audience for whom the text is composed. See Peter J. Rabinowitz.

9. The move to attribute paraleptic moments to the extra-textual author is also seen in Genette (208) and Phelan (Living 83).

10. Nielsen himself also admits to this objection (“The Impersonal Voice” 146).

11. Herman’s project brings the theory of possible worlds semantics into dialogue with narratology. See “Hypothetical Focalization.”

12. On the relationship between sexuality and subjectivity, see also Mandy Koolen.

13. For discussions on the ambiguous ending, see also Grgić (204) and Christensen (64).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mengni Kang

Mengni Kang is currently an assistant professor at University International College, Macau University of Science and Technology. She received her PhD in English from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests include unnatural narrative theories and postmodernist fiction. She has published articles in Hecate, Journal of Narrative Theory, and Style.