Abstract
This article argues that epistolary fiction has from its beginning approached the question of mimetic truthfulness from an ironic point of view. Rather than awarding the epistolary voice a special status, authors like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his Werther, have actively questioned the reliability of epistolary information. In doing so, he followed a similarly critical tradition in the English restoration novel, for instance in prose narratives by Aphra Behn, William Congreve, and George Farquhar.
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Bayer, G. Deceptive Narratives: On Truth and the Epistolary Voice. Z Literaturwiss Linguistik 39, 173–187 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03379833
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03379833