The Narratee in Contemporary British Fiction

The explicit evocation of the narratee, that is the addressee to whom the narrator directs his narrative, is one of the characteristic features of contemporary British fiction. This study argues that different forms of the narratee's presence can be systematised ac­cording to two gradable criteria: the degree of concretisation on the level of the presented world and the scope of interpretive com­petence attributed to the narratee by the narrator. On the basis of the former it identifies three basic types of narratee - potential readers/listeners (of minimum concretisation), characters (of medium concretisation) and protagonists (of maximum concretisation) - and discusses their basic properties and functions in relation to the different degrees of competence attributed to them in particular texts. 

The typology presented in the book outlines the full spectrum of theoretically identifiable degrees of narratee concretisation and competence. It thus seeks not only to discuss an important aspect of contemporary British fiction but also to create a system describing the forms in which the narratee appears in narrative fiction as such.

Dr Grzegorz Maziarczyk is an assistant professor in the Institu­te of English at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. He teaches literary theory as well as British Literature and has published ar­ticles on literary communication and contemporary British fiction.

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