How would you analyse 'narrative voice' in poetry/fiction?

Narrative voice is, to put it simply, the perspective from which the story is told. Henry James called this the 'center of consciousness'. Firstly, ask yourself: who is giving voice to the story? Generally, there are two kinds of narrators: 1) A first-person narrator. This person tells the story using 'I', 'me', 'myself'. All of the story, and the story-world, is filtered through their consciousness/perspective. A good example of a first-person narrator is Pip from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The second sentence in this book is 'So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip'. 2) A third-person narrator: This narrator tells the story of other people. They will use the pronouns 'he', 'she', 'they' etc. A popular example is the narrator who gives voice to Harry Potter. The first sentence goes: 'Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal'. While there are second-person narrators, they're much less common. Once you've established who's talking, you can start noticing more specific things about their voice: For example, do we feel like we trust them, or not? If not, why? Do they use slang? Do they have any 'catchphrases' or words they seem to use a lot?... etc. One absolutely key thing is that you distinguish between the author who's written the text and the person (within the text) who's narrating the story. In fiction, the author and the narrator are NOT the same person. A common mistake is to confuse the writer with the narrator. For example, when analysing his poem "The Comparison", we might be tempted to write: 'John Donne displays a revulsion for his mistress'. However, we cannot confuse Donne and the poem's voice. Therefore it's better to say: 'The speaker in John Donne's poem displays a revulsion for his mistress'. This is important because it suggests critical distance, and shows the examiner that you aren't one to make lazy assumptions.