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Overview
intrusive narrator
Quick Reference
An omniscient narrator who, in addition to reporting the events of a novel's story, offers further comments on characters and events, and who sometimes reflects more generally upon the significance of the story. A device used frequently by the great realist novelists of the 19th century, notably George Eliot and Leo Tolstoy, the intrusive narrator allows the novel to be used for general moral commentary on human life, sometimes in the form of brief digressive essays interrupting the narrative. An earlier example is the narrator of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749).
