Abstract
Catherine Belsey presents her model of realist fiction as one of "inter-subjective communication, of shared understanding of a text which re-presents the world [and which] is the guarantee not only of the truth of the text but of the reader's existence as an autonomous and knowing subject in a world of knowing subjects" (Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice, London and New York: Methuen, 1980: 69). Discuss the usefulness of this realist subject with the consideration of the narrator and detective figures in either or both, Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose and Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
