Narratee

Narratee is a term in narrative theory for the implied recipient of a narrative—the person to whom the storyteller directs the discourse. The narratee can be real or fictional, shaping how information is presented and what assumptions about the audience underlie the telling. In some analyses the external narratee is the actual reader, while an internal narratee is a character within the story who is addressed or who receives the narration within the fictional world.

The concept is associated with theorists such as Wayne C. Booth and Gérard Genette. Booth’s work centers on the implied reader as the target of fiction’s rhetorical strategies, while Genette emphasizes the narrator’s address to a narratee as a technical feature of narrative discourse. The narratee framework helps explain how a narrator selects detail, manages opacity or transparency, and uses direct address, digressions, or framed storytelling to control the reader’s or a character’s reception of events.

Functions and effects of narratee include shaping perspective and reliability, guiding interpretation, and producing irony or metaleptic effects. By designating a narratee, a text can invite sympathy, skepticism, or complicity, and can create a layered sense of audience within and beyond the fictional world. The presence of a narratee also underwrites structural devices such as direct address, inclusive “we/you” clauses, or shifting vantage points between narrators and readers.

Examples often cited include Jane Eyre’s concluding line, “Reader, I married him,” which directly addresses the reader as narratee. More broadly, narratee analysis distinguishes how a text’s implied audience influences what is disclosed, withheld, or emphasized, thereby shaping the overall meaning and reception of the narrative.