first‐person narrative, a narrative or mode of storytelling in which the narrator appears as the ‘I’ recollecting his or her own part in the events related, either as a witness of the action or as an important participant in it. The term is most often used of novels such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), in which the narrator is also the central character. The term does not mean that the narrator speaks only in the first person, of course: in discussions of other characters, the third person will be used.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Copyright © Chris Baldick 2001, 2004. All rights reserved.