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The return of the omniscient narrator in contemporary fiction: authorship and narrative authority in the new millennium

In an age of relativism, some of the most important novelists today are reviving a narrative voice long considered an outmoded relic of 19th century fiction: the authoritative all-knowing omniscient narrator. This project delivers the first study of th...

This project will classify new modes of omniscient narration; investigate how they have extended earlier postmodern experiments with novelistic form; and demonstrate how they manifest current anxieties about the cultural status of the novel in the new millenium. The outcome will be an important new method for the study of narrative fiction which can account for historical shifts in novelistic technique.

Project team

Associate Professor Paul Alan Dawson
Arts, Design & Architecture

Key contact

Arts, Design & Architecture
+61 2 9385 2220
paul.dawson@unsw.edu.au