Abstract: Narrative reliability focuses on specific textual strategies, while literary authenticity highlights the overall effect of presentation. In terms of rhetoric, the former reflects the rhetorical strategy of the implied author through the narrator, so that the latter can be guaranteed on the narrative level. In terms of cognition, narrative reliability relies on the reader's perspective mechanism, for which literary authenticity serves as the potential basis. Considering the factor of the real author, new situations regarding the narrative reliability of the implicit author's rhetoric and the reader's cognition will arise, which leads to the diversification of literary authenticity. Given that the focus of narrative reliability and that of literary authenticity differ, a complexity between narrative reliability and literary authenticity emerges: the narration is either reliable but unrealistic, or unreliable but realistic. On top of that, narrative reliability and literary authenticity are subject to the change of receptive context.

Key words: narrative reliability, literary authenticity, rhetoric, cognition