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The Immoralist And The Rhetoric Of First-Person Narration, John T. Booker

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Gide's The Immoralist, a short first-person novel written at the beginning of the century, has long been seen as an early example of the unreliable narrator. More recently, critical attention has focused on the tensions set up in the work between the carefully drawn formal structure of the narrative and the claim of Michel, the narrator, to tell his story in a direct and simple manner. Of more general interest, however, is the way Michel's narration provides insight into important developments that have taken place in the first-person novel itself in the twentieth century. Cast initially in a very …