Erzähltypen

Erzähltypen refers to the different types of narrators or focalizers within a literary work. Understanding Erzähltypen is crucial for analyzing how a story is presented and perceived by the reader. The primary distinction is between an external narrator and an internal narrator.

An external narrator exists outside the story world and typically recounts events from a third-person perspective. This narrator can be omniscient, possessing complete knowledge of all characters' thoughts, feelings, and actions, or limited, focusing on the experiences and perceptions of a single character or a small group.

An internal narrator, also known as a first-person narrator, is a character within the story who tells the tale from their own point of view. This perspective offers an intimate, though potentially unreliable, glimpse into the narrator's subjective experience. Their understanding of events and other characters is inherently limited by their position and biases.

Further classifications can include the degree of distance between the narrator and the narrated events, and the narrative distance, which describes how closely the narrator's perspective aligns with the characters' experiences. Analyzing the Erzähltyp helps decipher the author's intentions and the overall effect of the narrative on the reader.