Narrative

Culler, Jonathan D.
Omniscience
Narrative - Volume 12, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 22-34

The Ohio State University Press

Jonathan D. Culler - Omniscience - Narrative 12:1 Narrative 12.1 (2004) 22-34 Omniscience "Omniscience" is a notion I have used in discussing narrative, without giving it much thought but also without having much conviction that "the omniscient narrator" is a well-grounded concept or really helps account for narrative effects. Looking into the matter, I find this situation is not untypical. Critics refer to the notion all the time but few express much confidence in it. The idea of omniscience has not received much critical scrutiny. This past year I have spent time working on this problem, in a return to narratological matters, which I had rather neglected in recent years. Studying omniscience while observing a president who espouses Total Information Awareness, manifestly thinks he has nothing to learn from anyone, and is convinced of the infallibility of his judgment of evil in its accordance with God's, I have tried to keep my rising repugnance from attaching to the concept of omniscience in narrative poetics. I have endeavored to separate the concept of narrative omniscience from current political fantasy, and I hope I have succeeded. I am reminded, though, of Virginia Woolf's comment in a letter to her sister after receiving a visit from T. S. Eliot, who talked of his religious conversion: "I mean there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God" (3:457-58). I do not think the idea of omniscience is obscene,...