O narrador paraléptico em “Baster”, de Jeffrey Eugenides

The present article develops a study on the paraleptic narration in “Baster”, a short story written by American author Jeffrey Eugenides. For the purpose of this analysis, contributions from the field of narrative theory will be discussed, with an emphasis on theoretical studies from the branch of unnatural narratology. It is argued that the first-person singular narration in Eugenides' short story transgresses the notion of epistemic consistency, given the narrator-protagonist displays an omniscient knowledge, narrating events in which he did not participate and occasionally accessing the minds of other characters. Through the analysis of paralepsis in “Baster”, this study proposes possible interpretative paths for this phenomenon in fiction, applying the typology of paraleptic narrators developed by the literary theorist Rüdiger Heinze and the contributions of authors such as Brian Richardson, Jan Alber, Henrik Skov Nielsen and Gérard Genette.