Point of View in Narrative

Abstract

Abstract The problem of point of view is narrative art’s own problem, one that it does not share with lyric or dramatic literature. By definition narrative art requires a story and a story-teller. In the relationship between the teller and the tale, and that other relation ship between the teller and the audience, lies the essence of narrative art. The narrative situation is thus ineluctably ironical. The quality of irony is built into the narrative form as it is into no other form of literature. What the dramatist can achieve only with considerable effort, and what is utterly alien to the lyricist, is the natural basis of narrative art.