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Literature vocabulary · Narration and Point of View

Omniscient narrator

Meaning in literature, with examples

/ɒmˈnɪsiənt nəˈreɪtə/nounCommon term

In literature, omniscient narrator means: A third-person narrator who knows everything about the story, including the thoughts and feelings of all the characters and events in different places and times.

In Turkish: her şeyi bilen anlatıcı, ilahi bakış açılı anlatıcı, tanrısal anlatıcı

How it is used

Typical of the nineteenth-century novel (Tolstoy, George Eliot, Balzac). Critics contrast it with a limited third-person narrator, who follows only one character's mind. An omniscient narrator can comment, judge and move freely between characters.

Example sentences

  1. The omniscient narrator tells us what each guest at the dinner secretly thinks.

  2. Modern novelists rarely use a fully omniscient narrator.

Common collocations

  • third-person omniscient
  • an omniscient narrator
  • omniscient point of view
  • intrusive narrator
  • narratorThe voice that tells the story to the reader. It may be a character in the story or an outside voice, and it is not the same as the author.
  • point of viewThe position from which a story is told, which decides whose eyes we see events through and how much we learn, for example first-person or third-person.
  • first-person narratorA narrator who is a character in the story and tells it using 'I', so readers see events only through that character's eyes.
  • narrativeA story or account of connected events, and the way it is told; also used as an adjective for anything that tells a story.

More terms: Narration and Point of View

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