Second-person narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Log in / create account

Article Talk

Read Edit View history

Second-person narrative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Featured content

The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main
character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of
addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you".

Current events

Example:

Main page
Contents

Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages
Franais
Trke

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the
morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar,
although the details are fuzzy. Opening lines of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big
City (1984)
Traditionally, the employment of the second-person form in literary fiction has not been as prevalent
as the corresponding first-person and third-person forms, yet second-person narration is, in many
languages, a very common technique of several popular and non- or quasi-fictional written genres
such as guide books, self-help books, do-it-yourself manuals, interactive fiction, role-playing games,
gamebooks such as the Choose Your Own Adventure series, musical lyrics, advertisements and also
blogs.
Although not the most common narrative technique in literary fiction, second-person narration has
constituted a favoured form of various literary works within, notably, the modern and post-modern
tradition. In addition to a significant number of consistent (or nearly consistent) second-person novels
and short-stories by, for example, Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Carlos Fuentes, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, the technique of narrative second-person address has been widely employed in shorter
or longer intermittent chapters or passages of narratives by William Faulkner, Gnter Grass, Italo
Calvino, Nuruddin Farah, Jan Kjrstad and many others (cf. the list of second-person narratives
below).
Contents [hide]
1 List of notable second person narratives
2 List of criticism
3 See also
4 External links

List of notable second person narratives

[edit]

Narratives written consistently in the second person or narratives including chapters or larger and/or
intermittent passages in the second person:
John Lydgate "The Legend of St. Gyle" from The Minor Poems of John Lydgate
Leo Tolstoy 1855 Sebastopol in December, 1854 Part I of Sebastopol Sketches
Giovanni Verga 1879 "Fantasticheria" from Vita dei campi
Lionel Britton 1931 Hunger and Love
Lewis Grassic Gibbon 1932 Sunset Song
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1935 "The Haunted Mind" in Twice-Told Tales (1837)
William Faulkner 1936 Absalom, Absalom!
Mary McCarthy 1942 "The Genial Host" from The Company She Keeps
Peter Bowman 1945 Beach Red

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative[27/02/2012 09:30:28]

Second-person narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ilse Aichinger 1954 "Spiegelgeschichte" from Meine Sprache und Ich: Erzhlungen
Albert Camus 1956 La Chute (tr. The Fall)
Michel Butor 1957 La Modification (tr. Second Thoughts)
Brian W. Aldiss 1958 "Poor Little Warrior!" from The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus
John Ashmead 1961 The Mountain and the Feather
Gnter Grass 1961 Katz und Maus (tr. Cat and Mouse)
Carlos Fuentes 1962 Aura (tr. Aura)
Carlos Fuentes 1962 La muerte de Artemio Cruz (tr. The death of Artemio Cruz)
Michel Zraffa 1964 LHistoire
Brian Stanley Johnson 1964 Albert Angelo
John McGahern 1965 The Dark
Peter Everett 1966 The Fetch
Georges Perec 1967 Un homme qui dort (tr. A Man Asleep)
Rumer Godden 1968 "You Need to Go Upstairs" from Gone: A Thread of Stories
Edna O'Brien 1970 A Pagan Place
Angela Carter 1974 "Elegy for a Freelance" from Fireworks. Nine Profane Pieces
Alice Munro 1974 "Tell Me Yes or No" from Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You: Thirteen
Stories
Max Frisch 1976 "Burleske" from Max Frisch: Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge, 1944-1949
Christa Wolf 1976 Kindheitsmuster (tr. Patterns of Childhood)
Margaret Gibson 1978 "Leaving" from Love Stories by New Women
Edmund White 1978 Nocturnes for the King of Naples
Norman Spinrad 1978 Riding the Torch
Julio Cortzar 1979 "Graffiti" from We Love Glenda So Much and Other Tales
Oriana Fallaci 1979 A Man
Samuel Beckett 1979 Company
Italo Calvino 1979 Se una notte dinverno un viaggiatore (tr. If on a winter's night a traveler)
Keith Roberts 1980 Molly Zero
Frederick Barthelme 1981 "Esquire 95" from Moon Deluxe: Stories
Marguerite Duras 1982 La Maladie de la mort (tr. Malady of Death)
Margaret Atwood 1983 "Happy Endings" Murder in the Dark
Frederick Barthelme 1983 "Moon Deluxe" from Moon Deluxe: Stories
Frederick Barthelme 1983 "Safeway" from Moon Deluxe: Stories
George Garrett 1983 The Succession: A Novel of Elizabeth and James
Jay McInerney 1984 Bright Lights, Big City
Lorrie Moore 1985 Self-Help (six of the nine short stories are second-person narratives)
Nuruddin Farah 1986 Maps
Ron Butlin 1987 The Sound of My Voice
Jamaica Kincaid 1988 A Small Place
Gloria Naylor 1988 Mama Day
Virgil Suarez 1989 Latin Jazz
Gao Xingjian 1990 Ling Shan (tr. Soul Mountain)
Dr Seuss 1990 Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Tim O'Brien 1990 The Things They Carried
L.E. Modesitt, Jr. 1992 The Towers of the Sunset
Terry McMillan 1992 Waiting To Exhale an introductory chapter for Bernadine
Mavis Gallant 1993 "Mille Dias de Corta"
Jan Kjrstad 1993 Forfreren (tr. The Seducer)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative[27/02/2012 09:30:28]

Second-person narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alasdair Gray 1993 Tall Tales and True

Iain Banks 1993 Complicity
Sunetra Gupta 1993 The Glassblower's Breath
Stuart Dybek 1994 "We Didn't" from Prize Stories 1994. The O. Henry Awards
Robert O'Connor 1994 Buffalo Soldiers
Tom Robbins 1994 Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Edwidge Danticat 1995 Epilogue to Krik? Krak!
Chuck Palahniuk 1996 Fight Club (novel)
Junot Diaz 1997 "How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)" from Drown
David Foster Wallace 1999 "Forever Overhead" in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Stewart O'Nan 1999 A Prayer for the Dying
Simon Armitage 1999 All Points North
Richard Powers 2000 Plowing the Dark
Carlos Fuentes 2001 Instinto de Inez (tr. Instinct of Inez)
Ian Rankin "Glimmer" (Reprinted in the short story anthology Beggars Banquet, 2002)
Karin Lowachee 2002 Warchild
Julie Orringer 2003 "Note to Sixth Grade Self" in How to Breathe Underwater
Aniruddha Bahal 2003 Bunker 13
John Updike 2003 How to love America and leave it at the same time in The Early Stories: 19531975
Nikki Gemmell 2003 The Bride Stripped Bare
Jeff VanderMeer 2003 Veniss Underground
Dennis Lehane 2004 "Until Gwen" in The Atlantic Monthly
Chuck Palahniuk 2005 "Foot Work" in Haunted
Tim Winton 2005 "Long, Clear View" in The Turning
Iain Pears 2005 The Portrait
Matthew Woodring Stover 2005 Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (several vignettes between
chapters)
A.L. Kennedy 2007 Day
Charles Stross 2007 Halting State
Jhumpa Lahiri 2008 "Hema and Kaushik" a trio of short stories in Lahiri's latest book
Unaccustomed Earth
Shin Kyung-sook 2008 (tr. Please Look After Mother)
Jennifer Egan 2010 Out of Body from A Visit from the Goon Squad
Patrick Sencal 2010 Contre Dieu
William Lychack 2011 "Stolpestad" and "Griswald" in The Architect of Flowers
Erin Morgenstern 2011 "The Night Circus"
Charles Stross 2011 Rule 34
Mohsin Hamid 2007 "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"

List of criticism

[edit]

Helmut Bonheim (1983) "Narration in the Second Person" in Recherches anglaises et

americaines, 16 (1): 69-80."
John Capecci (1989) "Performing the Second-Person." in: Text and Performance Quarterly 1: 4252.
Matt DelConte (2003) "Why You Cant Speak: Second-Person Narration, Voice, and a New
Model for Understanding Narrative." in: Style 37: 204-19.
Monika Fludernik (1994) Ed. "Second-Person Narrative." Special issue. in: Style 28.3.
Monika Fludernik (1994) "Second-Person Narrative: A Bibliography." in: Style 28.4: 525-48.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative[27/02/2012 09:30:28]

Second-person narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rita Gnutzmann (1983) "La novela hispanoamericana en segunda persona" ["The HispanoAmerican Novel in the Second Person"]. in: Iberoromania ns 17: 100-20.
M. F. Hopkins, and L. Perkins (1981) "Second-Person Point of View" in d. F. N. Magill (ed.)
Critical Survey of Short Fiction. 119-32.
Irene Kacandes (1993) "Are You In the Text?: The 'Literary Performative' In Postmodernist
Fiction." in: Text and Performance Quarterly 13: 139-53.
Uri Margolin (1994) "Narrative 'You' Revisited." in: Language and Style 23.4: 1-21.
Klaus Meyer-Minnemann (1984) "Narracion homodiegetica y 'segunda persona'" in: Acta Literaria
9: 5-27.
Bruce Morrissette (1965) "Narrative 'You' in Contemporary Literature." in: Comparative Literature
Studies 2 (1965): 1-24.
Phelan, James (1994) "Self-Help for Narratee and Narrative Audience: How 'I' * and 'You' * Read
'How'." in: Style 28: 350-65.
Brian Richardson (1994) "I etcetera: On the Poetics and Ideology of Multipersoned Narratives." in:
Style 28: 312-28.
Brian Richardson (2006) Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Postmodern
Contemporary Fiction.
Peter Standish (1991) "La segunda persona y el narratario en los cuentos de Cortzar" ["The
Second Person and the Narratee in the Stories of Cortzar"]. in: Modern Language Notes 106:
432-40.
Jill Walker (2000) "Do you think you're part of this? Digital texts and the second person address"
in Markku Eskelinen and Raine Koskimaa (eds.) 'Cybertext Yearbook', Jyvskyl University, pp 822. http://jilltxt.net/txt/do_you_think.pdf
Ursula Wiest-Kellner (1999) Messages from the Threshold. Die You-Erzhlform als Ausdruck
liminaler Wesen und Welten.

See also

[edit]

Narrative mode
Narrator
Role-playing games

External links

[edit]

Schofield, Dennis (1998-12-01). The Second Person: A Point of View? The Function of the
Second-Person Pronoun in Narrative Prose Fiction . Deakin University. Retrieved 2007-03-29.
Narrative

vde
Character
Plot

[hide]

Antagonist/Archenemy Characterization Deuteragonist False protagonist Focal character

Foil character Protagonist Supporting character Tritagonist Viewpoint character
Climax Conflict Dnouement Dialogue Dramatic structure Exposition Falling action
Plot device Subplot Trope-Clich

Setting

Dystopia Fictional city Fictional country Fictional location Fictional universe Utopia

Theme

Leitmotif Moral Motif

Style

Diction Figure of speech Imagery Literary technique Narrative mode Stylistic device
Suspension of disbelief Symbolism Tone

Form

Fable-Parable Fabliaux Fairy tale Flash story Folktale-Legend Hypertext Novel Novella
Play Poem Screenplay Short story List of narrative forms

Genre

Adventure Comic Crime Docufiction Epistolary Erotic Faction Fantasy Historical

Horror Magic realism Mystery Paranoid Philosophical Political Romance Saga Satire
Science Speculative Superhero Thriller Urban
Alternating person First-person Second-person Third-person (Limited Objective

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative[27/02/2012 09:30:28]

Second-person narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Narrator
Tense

Omniscient Subjective) Stream of consciousness The narrative types of the narrator

Unreliable
Past tense Present tense Future tense

Medium

Screenwriting

Related

Audience Author Fiction writing Creative nonfiction Literary theory Narrative structure
Narratology Other narrative modes Rhetoric Storytelling
Literature portal

Categories: Narratology

Fiction

Style (fiction)

Point of view

This page was last modified on 11 February 2012 at 18:23.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of
use for details.
Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Contact us
Privacy policy

About Wikipedia

Disclaimers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative[27/02/2012 09:30:28]

Mobile view