WHAT IS AN EXTRADIEGETIC NARRATOR? - LITERATURE - 2025

The extradiegetic narrator is a narrative figure characterized by recounting events on an external level, distancing himself from the facts. It is a third person, who offers his vision of the facts and the characters. He is also known as an external or zero-degree narrator.

In some cases it may also be temporarily included within the narration, although without any participation in what it narrates. This allows you to remain an outsider when it comes to certain aspects of the story, so the third person voice is still adequate.

Despite being distant from the story, the voice and narrative can be addressed directly to one or more of the characters or their actions, establishing the prominence quotas within what is narrated.

This type of narrator can be both heterodiegetic and homodiegetic, since these names are not self-exclusive.

Extradiegetic narration establishes an external narrative level of voice, while heterodiegetic and homodiegetic terms establish the narrator's relationship with the story.

There are conflicting opinions on the nature of this narrative, since some authors establish that it can be used for all types of history, while others include it as a neutral point from which the diegesis starts, that is, a fully fictitious story.

Likewise, Plato and other authors of ancient Greece, took for granted that the extradiegetic narrator was the author.

However, its absence in the stories does not allow reliable differentiation between the author, an alter ego, or any other "character" that is not a character within the story proper. There may even be more than one extradiegetic narrator in a story.

Types of extradiegetic narrator

Story and narrative theorists maintain that certain "powers" observed in the extradiegetic narrator allow a specific classification to be made.

These incorporate elements of the heterodiegetic and homodiegetic narration, but always from the point of view of a third party:

Omniscient narrator

He is a storyteller who knows everything and is also everywhere. It tells the facts and also knows the motivations, thoughts and emotions of the characters involved.

He possesses in-depth knowledge of history, which allows him a certain sense of timelessness, managing past, present and future. This type of storyteller may or may not make opinions and judgments as well.

Observing narrator

He tells the story with an external focus and emphasizes that events like this happened because he witnessed them.

He becomes a kind of companion who has no interaction with the other characters. He is a narrator who may or may not sometimes be included in the voice, but his participation is null.

His capacity as a witness gives him limited powers due to his vision, this makes the accounts of the events considered objective.

However, it is common for some authors to allow this narrator to express his opinion or judgment; in that case everything you say will be subjective, since your knowledge is limited.

The extradiegetic narration and the connection with the narrator-person

As we have said before, the extradiegetic level can be combined with the heterodiegetic and homodiegetic narrators, resulting in a narrator with unique facts, from an external level, but which may or may not be self-referential.

Homer and Lazarus are excellent examples of this.

Homer narrates the Iliad being completely absent, while Lazarus narrates the events externally but as a homodiegetic character, since he describes the actions in the third person.

References

1. García Landa, J. Á. (1998). Action, story, speech. Structure of narrative fiction. Salamanca: University of Salamanca.
2. Gomez-Vidal, E. (2010). The spectacle of creation and reception: Games of the late age by Luis Landero. Bordeaux: Presses Univ de Bordeaux.
3. Paz Gago, JM (1995). Quixote semiotics: theory and practice of narrative fiction. Amsterdam - Atlanta: Rodopi.
4. Pimentel, LA (1998). The story in perspective: study of narrative theory. Coyoacán: XXI century.
5. Ruffinatto, A. (1989). On texts and worlds: (essays on Hispanic philology and semiotics). Murcia: EDITUM.
6. Valles Calatrava, JR (2008). Narrative theory: a systematic perspective. Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert Editorial.