CP de literatura engleza - Gabriela Colipca.pdf

Universitatea “Dunărea de Jos”din Galați

Facultatea de Litere

Specializarea:Limba și literatura română – Limba și literatura engleză

Curs practic delimbă şi literatură engleză

Conf. dr. Gabriela Iuliana Colipcă

Anul II, Semestrul II

D.I.D.F.R.2012

UDJGFaculty of Letters

Narrative and stylisticpatterns in the

eighteenth-century novel(Practical Course in English Literature

for 2nd year students)

Course tutor:Associate Professor Gabriela Iuliana Colipcă, PhD

Galați2012

Table of Contents

Narrative and Stylistic Patterns in the Eighteenth-century Novel 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS1. Representational Patterns in Fictional Discourse 51.1. Literature and Reality 51.2. Realism: A Literary Trend and/or a Mode of Discourse 71.3. Practical Applications (1) 8

2. Introduction to Narratology 112.1. Gérard Genette’s Theory of Narrative Discourse 11

2.1.1. Tense: Order. Duration. Frequency 122.1.2. Mood: Distance. Narrative Perspective 132.1.3. Voice: Time of the Narrating. Narrative Levels. “Person” 16

2.2. Wayne Booth and The Rhetoric of Fiction 192.3. Practical Applications (2) 20

3. Style in Fiction 253.1. Speech and Character 25

3.1.1. Realism in Conversation 253.1.2. Dialect and Idiolect 26

3.2. Narrative and Stylistic Structures 263.2.1. Fictional Sequencing 273.2.2. Descriptive Focus 273.2.3. Fictional and Discoursal Points of View 283.2.4. Irony. Tone. Distance 293.2.5. Narrators and Discourse Situations 29

3.3. The Rhetoric of the Text 313.3.1. Coordination and Subordination 313.3.2. Addresser-based Rhetoric. Writing Imitating Speech 333.3.3. Iconicity: The Imitation Principle 333.3.4. Cohesion 34

3.4. Practical Applications (3) 35

4. Representations of Reality in the Eighteenth-century EnglishNovel. Practical Applications (4) 39

4.1. Daniel Defoe, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous MollFlanders 39

4.2. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 404.3. Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph

Andrews and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams 414.4. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling 444.5. Tobias George Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random 454.6. Tobias George Smollett, Ferdinand Count Fathom 464.7. Tobias George Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker 494.8. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa: or, The History of a Young Lady 514.9. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,

Gentleman 544.10. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and

Italy by Mr. Yorick 57

Bibliography 60

4 Narrative and Stylistic Patterns in the Eighteenth-century Novel

Section 1. Representational Patterns in Fictional Discourse


SECTION 1. Representational Patterns in FictionalDiscourse

1.1. Literature and Reality

The relation between fiction and reality – or rather the illusion of reality– has played a central role in understanding and defining literaturethroughout its entire history. That is why, this relation – usually referred to asmimesis – has been openly acknowledged as a key issue. Yet paradoxically,theorists and writers cannot seem to agree upon a “unanimously accepted”perception of it. Different literary trends and schools of literary criticism havegiven it varied and contradictory interpretations. To trace them all backthroughout the history of literature and of literary criticism, respectively, is not,however, the main goal of this practical course. Consequently, the furtherdiscussion will be limited to the presentation of the key issues related tomimesis that enhance our understanding of the mechanisms ofrepresentation in fiction.

The origins of this concern with the relation between literature andreality can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. The former is, actually, thefirst to have introduced the concept of mimesis or, in his terms, “imitation/copy of reality”. In fact, he distinguished between “direct imitation ofspeech” or dialogue and “indirect imitation of reality” or summarizingnarration. Their combination was not, according to Plato, always to bebenefited from, as the resulting “copies of reality”, “mere substitutes for thethings themselves” may, unfortunately, be “false or illusory substitutes thatstir up antisocial emotions (violence or weakness) and they may representbad persons and actions, encouraging imitation of evil.” (Mitchell, 1995: 14-15)

It was then the task of the latter to rehabilitate the concept and toreveal it in a different light by relating it not to the dichotomic pair true/ false,but with truth and possibility/likeness. Thus, as contemporary interpretationsof the Aristotelian text have clearly pointed out, mimesis does not appear asa mere, perfect imitation/copy of reality but as a representational model ofit. (See Bal, 1982: 172- 174)

As Geoffrey Leech also emphasises, readers should keep in mind notto compare “two incomparable things”: language and extra-linguistic realities(1992: 152). The understanding of a piece of writing – fictional or non-fictional– can only be explained in terms of our existing model(s) of reality. To putit otherwise, our making sense of a piece of writing, in general, is influenced,on the one hand, by “the structure of fact, explanation, supposition,which draws on our already existing knowledge” and, on the other hand,by the plausibility of the report, i.e. “the possibility of making plausibleconnections between one act and another.” (Leech, 1992: 154) In the end,the written text can offer but a representational model which may turn outto be more or less faithful to the represented reality.



Semantic level Semantic level

Writer Syntactic level Syntactic level Readerencodes decodes

Graphological level Graphological level

Text

The diagram of the communication process (in written language) indicatingthe possible levels for the study of style (where stylistic variation might occur)

(Leech, 1992: 126)

As Leech repeatedly emphasises, “communication (…) always has todo with some general universe of reference or model of reality which weas human beings carry insides our heads, and which consists of all the thingswe know, believe, judge or understand to be the case in the world in whichwe live. How we have acquired this model of reality need not concern us, norneed the complexities of its structure. It will be sufficient to regard it as thestarting point and finishing point of communication in an informational sense.That is, when we inform someone by means of language, we retrieve amessage from our model of reality and, by means of encoding and decodingof language, transfer it to the addressee, who then fits it into his own modelof reality. (…) The same thing happens in fictional discourse, except that it isa postulated or imagined model of reality – in short, a fiction – that istransferred to the addressee.” (1992: 125)

Inevitably, throughout the history of literature, the various perspectiveson the rules governing the representations of reality in fiction have causedwriters and theorists to distinguish between types of fiction. The oldestthree types seem to be the mimetic, the paramimetic and the antimimetictypes which have co-existed at all levels in the history of literature.

Mimetic literature is based on the idea that the literary work is highlydependent upon the outer reality to be represented as faithfully aspossible.

Paramimetic literature: The external reality is ignored, evensurpassed by the work that creates its own referent; otherwise, “thefictional universe is created as an allegorical or metaphorical modelof some empirical relationships.”

Antimimetic literature puts forth a definite break with the empiricalreality which is replaced by language as the substance to bemoulded by the literary work, thus creating a new, different modelof reality. (Zgorzelski, 1984: 302-306)

Model of reality Model of reality

Message Message



1.2. Realism: A Literary Trend and/or a Mode of Discourse

At this point, an important remark should be made: certaincautiousness is needed in the use of the term Realism since “it is crammedwith definitions and connotations.” (Stewart, 1969: 3)

In the narrow sense, Realism is strictly applied to the artisticmovement spreading throughout Europe especially during the latter half ofthe nineteenth century. Unlike the Romantics, the Realists placed emphasison telling the truth about ordinary life, about heroes and heroines determinedby their social environment.

Yet, in the broader sense, as twentieth-century criticism has shown,Realism should be perceived rather as a technique that can be referred tonot only in the case of the literary productions of the above mentioned literarytrend, but also of other historical periods, here including of the eighteenthcentury. In this sense, one could identify, in the history of literature, differenttypes of realism – but never absolute realism, because “language by its verynature is a vehicle for abstraction and differentiation.” (Leech, 1992: 151) Thedegree of realism of a piece of fiction is definitely influenced by “the purposeof the writer and the effect on the reader.” (1992: 152)

One of the questions that a writer probably always asks himself whenembarking upon the writing process is: “What kinds of detail, and how muchdetail, should be added to fill out the ‘model of reality’?” (1992: 155) Thereare artistic criteria of relevance that the writer must consider in this respect.

1. Symbolism. There is the impulse to specify such details, in the mock-reality, as can be interpreted as standing for something beyond themselves,something universally important in the human condition. In this sense, themessage itself, in literature, becomes a code, a symbolic structure. In thegeneric framework of a dramatization of general human conflicts, eachcharacter, place, incident could be elaborated in such a way as to berepresentative, to some extent, of a type or category of humanexperience. (Leech, 1992: 155-56)

2. Verisimilitude. But is it important to balance the impulse towardsuniversality against the impulse towards individuality. The latter may alsoinfluence the artistic choice of detail lending the text verisimilitude or theillusion of reality, i.e., the sense of being in the presence of actualindividual things, events, people, and places. (Leech, 1992: 156)

In defining verisimilitude, however, a more refined perspective mayalso be adopted, as suggested by literary theorists like Tzvetan Todorov(1974). According to him, the verisimilitude of a piece of writing mustencompass two coordinates focusing on both content and form.

Thus, on the one hand, stress is laid on the relationship of fiction tothe contemporary reality to be represented, i.e., to the extra-linguisticmaterial. The ability of the literary work to raise and to try to answer ethicalquestions (as related to key issues in the social and political life, genderrelations, etc.) is, in this way, assessed. For the eighteenth-century fictionthat the practical course will further propose for discussion, these ethicalquestions refer to “how the social order is related to the internal moral stateof its members” (McKeon, 1989: 20), as the mission of the novel is to conveya moral message in order to accomplish an educational task.



On the other hand, interest must be taken in the relationship to therules that govern the literary discourse itself, i.e., the acknowledgedaesthetic codes. Despite its directness and simplicity, realism, as a mode ofwriting, is not a simple or artless mode; on the contrary, it involves carefulchoices on the part of the writers that might enable them to create the illusionof a ‘true’ and ‘faithful’ representation of reality.

Altogether, symbolism and verisimilitude need not be mutuallyexclusive. The contribution of the specific detail may be both symbolic andrealistic. (Leech, 1992: 156-57)

3. Credibility. As another aspect of realism, closely related to verisimilitude,credibility may be defined as “the likelihood, hence believability, of the fictionas a ‘potential reality’, given that we apply our expectations and influencesabout the real world to fictional happenings.” (Leech, 1992: 157) In otherwords, a fiction tends to be credible to the extent that it overlaps with, or is aplausible extension of, our ‘real’ model of reality.

4. Consistency. There are, of course, exceptions from the rule, such as SFworks or novels based on fantastic realism like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’sTravels. They rather strike the readers by the consistency of the detail whichimplicitly affects its credibility as well: “an unfamiliar reality which obeys itsown set of laws is more credible than one which does not.” (Leech, 1992:158)

The combination of verisimilitude and credibility is a main feature ofthe basically ‘realistic’ kind of fiction, which thus establishes a contract ofgood faith with the reader, a convention of authenticity. But there are alsocases when verisimilitude and credibility work in opposite directions (e.g.Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels). Then, the fabulous takes place against thebackground of the believable, and this coexistence of commonsense andverisimilitude suggests the satirical interpretation of the novel. (Leech, 1992:158-159)

All in all, whatever its artistic function, specification of detail is a matterof degree and it is not restricted to material facts, but could extend to ‘non-material’ things such as feelings, thoughts and motifs as well.

1.3. Practical Applications (1)

Consider the following excerpts and discuss them in terms of the type ofliterature they are representative for. Add to your comments remarksregarding the type/ function of detail in the framework of a certain type ofrealism that they illustrate:

a) In search of a place proper for this, I found a little plain on the side of arising hill, whose front towards this little plain was steep as a house-side, sothat nothing could come down upon me from the top. On the one side of therock there was a hollow place, worn a little way in, like the entrance or doorof a cave but there was not really any cave or way into the rock at all.

On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I resolved topitch my tent. This plain was not above a hundred yards broad, and abouttwice as long, and lay like a green before my door; and, at the end of it,descended irregularly every way down into the low ground by the seaside. It



was on the N.N.W. side of the hill; so that it was sheltered from the heatevery day, till it came to a W. and by S. sun, or thereabouts, which, in thosecountries, is near the setting.

Before I set up my tent I drew a half-circle before the hollow place,which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the rock, and twentyyards in its diameter from its beginning and ending.

In this half-circle I pitched two rows of strong stakes, driving them intothe ground till they stood very firm like piles, the biggest end being out of theground above five feet and a half, and sharpened on the top. The two rowsdid not stand above six inches from one another.

(Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1994: 62)

b) The last of these voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of thesea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. I removed fromthe Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping, hoping to getbusiness among the sailors; but it would not turn to account. After threeyears expectation that things would mend, I accepted an advantageous offerfrom Captain William Prichard, master of the Antelope, who was making avoyage to the South Sea. We set sail from Bristol, May 4, 1699, and ourvoyage was at first very prosperous.

(…) we were driven by a violent storm to the north-west of VanDiemen’s Land. By an observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30degrees 2 minutes south. Twelve of our crew were dead by immoderatelabour and ill food; the rest were in a very weak condition. On the 5th ofNovember, which was the beginning of summer in those parts, the weatherbeing very hazy, the seamen spied a rock within half a cable’s length of theship; but the wind was so strong, that we were driven directly upon it, andimmediately split. […]

The Country round appeared like a continued Garden, and theinclosed Fields, which were generally Forty Foot square, resembled so manyBeds of Flowers. These Fields were intermingled with Woods of half a Stang,and the tallest Trees, as I could judge, appeared to be seven Foot high. Iviewed the Town on my left Hand, which looked like the painted Scene of aCity in a Theatre. [...] The Emperor was already descended from the Tower,and advancing on Horse-back towards me, which had like to have cost himdear; for the Beast, though very well trained, yet wholly unused to such aSight, which appeared as if a Mountain moved before him, he reared up onhis hinder Feet: But that Prince, who is an excellent Horse-man, kept hisSeat, till his Attendants ran in, and held the Bridle, while his Majesty had timeto dismount. When he alighted, he surveyed me round with great Admiration,but kept without the length of my Chain. He ordered his Cooks and Butlers,who were already prepared, to give me Victuals and Drink, which theypushed forward in a sort of Vehicles upon Wheels till I could reach them. Itook these Vehicles, and soon emptied them all; twenty of them were filledwith Meat, and ten with Liquor; each of the former afforded me two or threegood Mouthfuls, and I emptied the Liquor of ten Vessels, which wascontained in earthen Vials, into one Vehicle, drinking it off at a Draught; andso I did with the rest.

(Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 1998: 6, 15, 16)

d) Now to any one else I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths andimprecations which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two



hundred and fifty years last past as originals – except St. Paul's thumb –God's flesh and God's fish, which were oaths monarchical, and, consideringwho made them, not much amiss; and as kings oaths, 'tis not much matterwhether they were fish or flesh; - else I say, there is not an oath, or at least acurse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out ofErnulphus a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely short ofthe force and spirit of the original! – it is thought to be no bad oath – and byitself passes very well – 'G-d damn you.' – Set it beside Ernulphus's – 'Godalmighty the Father damn you – God the Son damn you – God the HolyGhost damn you' – you see 'tis nothing. –There is an orientality in his, wecannot rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention – possess'dmore of the excellencies of a swearer – had such a thorough knowledge ofthe human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints,and articulations, - that when Ernulphus cursed – no part escaped him. – 'Tistrue there is something of a hardness in his manner – and, as in MichaelAngelo, a want of grace – but then there is such a greatness of gusto!

(Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1997: 149)

Section 2. Introduction to Narratology


SECTION 2. Introduction to Narratology

2.1. Gérard Genette’s Theory of Narrative Discourse

A literary theorist associated with the structuralist movement, GérardGenette proposes a narratological approach that distinguishes between:

Story (French. Histoire) for the signified or narrative content; Narrative (French. Récit) for the signifier/ statement/ discourse/

narrative text itself; Narrating (French. Narration) for the producing narrative action and,

by extension, the whole of the real or fictional situation in which thataction takes place.

Consequently, according to him, the analysis of narrative discoursepresupposes the study of the relationships between:

- narrative and story;- narrative and narrating;- story and narrating (to the extent to which this relationship is

inscribed in the narrative discourse).Considering the fact that all narrative is, above all, a linguistic

production undertaking to tell of one or several events, Genette ranges theconstituents of narrative discourse under three categories, namely:

Tense – temporal relations between narrative and story; Mood – modalities (forms and degrees) of narrative representation; Voice (not person, which might mistakably lead to an association with

the traditional opposition between the ‘first-person’ and ‘third-person’narratives, that Genette does not agree with) – the way in which thenarrating itself (i.e., the narrative situation or its instance and its twoprotagonists, the narrator and the audience, real or implied) isimplicated in the narrative.

Tense and Mood operate on the level of connection between Story andNarrative; Voice designates the relations between both Narrating andNarrative, on the one hand, and Narrating and Story, on the other. Thusdescribed, the narrative levels and the categories that should be taken intoaccount for their analysis could be graphically represented as follows:

STORY NARRATIVENARRATING

TENSE AND MOODVOICE



2.1.1. Tense: Order. Duration. Frequency

Genette proposes to study the relations between the temporaldimension of the narrative and the time of the story according to threeessential determinations:

A. “connections between the temporal order of succession of the eventsin the story and the pseudo-temporal order of their arrangement in thenarrative”;

B. connections of speed between “the variable duration of these eventsor story sections and the pseudo-duration (in fact, length of the text) oftheir telling in the narrative”;

C. “connections of frequency, that is (…) relations between the repetitivecapacities of the story and those of the narrative.” (1980: 35)

A. OrderTo describe the “various types of discordance between the two

orderings of story and narrative” that might be conceived as deviations from aso-called, rather hypothetical, zero degree “that would be a condition ofperfect temporal correspondence between narrative and story” (1980: 36),the French theorist proposes the term of anachrony and distinguishesbetween the following:

prolepsis = “any narrative manoeuvre that consists of narrating orevoking in advance an event that will take place later” (1980: 40);

analepsis = “any evocation after the fact of an event that took placeearlier than the point in the story where we are at any given moment”(1980: 40).He maintains that, by establishing a so-called “first narrative,” i.e., “the

temporal level of narrative with respect to which the anachrony is defined”(1980: 48), it is possible to distinguish between:

external analepsis (“this analepsis whose extent remains external tothe extent of the first narrative”) (1980: 49);

internal analepsis mixed analepsis (“whose reach goes back to a point earlier and

whose extent arrives at a point later than the beginning of the firstnarrative”) (1980: 49).

Yet, the categorisation of analepses should not be limited to this distinction,but should be developed so as to clearly indicate the differences between twotypes of internal analepses. On the one hand, there are those calledheterodiegetic, “that is analepses dealing with a story line (and thus with adiegetic content) different from the content (or contents) of the first narrative”(1980: 50). They classically deal either with a character recently introducedwhose past the narrator wants to shed more light on or with a character thathas been out of sight for some time and whose past the readers must catch upwith. On the other hand, there are also internal homodiegetic analepses thatdeal with the same line of action as the first narrative and for which the risk ofinterference is apparently unavoidable (1980: 50-1).

Like analepses, prolepses can be categorized, considering the samecriteria, as internal and external, homodiegetic and heterodiegetic.



B. Duration“By speed we mean the relationship between a temporal dimensionand a spatial dimension (…): the speed of a narrative will be defined bythe relationship between a duration (that of the story, measured inseconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years) and a length (that ofthe text, measured in lines and in pages).” (1980: 87-8)

For a more explicit description of the variations in tempo/narrative speed,Genette stresses the importance of four basic forms of narrative movements:

descriptive pause (NT = n, ST = 0, thus NT ∞ > ST, i.e. NT is infinitelygreater than ST);

scene, “most often in dialogue, which (…) realizes conventionally theequality of time between narrative and story” (NT = ST) (1980: 94);

summary, “a form with a variable tempo (whereas the tempo of theother three is fixed, at least in principle) which with great flexibility ofpace covers the entire range included between scene and ellipsis)”(NT < ST) (1980: 94);

ellipsis (NT = 0, ST = n, thus NT < ∞ ST, i.e. NT is infinitely less thanST) (See Genette, 1980: 95).

C. FrequencyNarrative frequency can be defined as “the relations of frequency (or,

more simply, of repetition) between the narrative and the diegesis” (1980:113). In this respect, distinction should be made between:

Singulative narrative or, otherwise, narrating once what happenedonce. (e.g. Yesterday I went to bed early.): “… the singularness of thenarrated statement corresponds to the singularness of the narratedevent…” (1980: 114).

Repeating narrative or narrating n times what happened once (e.g.Yesterday I went to bed early, yesterday I went to bed early, yesterdayI went to bed early, etc.) Although apparently rather hypothetical andirrelevant to literature, this kind of repetition has been successfullyexploited at different stages in the evolution of the novel, hereincluding the eighteenth-century epistolary novel, or novels in whichstress is laid on the repetition doubled by stylistic or viewpointvariations or that display repeating anachronies such as notices inadvance and recalls. (1980: 115)

Iterative narrative or narrating one time (or rather at one time) whathappened n times: “a single narrative utterance takes upon itselfseveral occurrences together of the same event (in other words, onceagain, several events considered only in terms of their analogy)”(1980: 116). This type of narrative can be easily identified because ofits association with grammatical markers of frequency.

2.1.2. Mood: Distance. Narrative Perspective

Another category ‘moulded’ upon a grammatical model is that of thenarrative mood, which, like its grammatical counterpart, has its own degrees:

“The narrative can furnish the reader with more or fewer details, and ina more or less direct way, and can thus seem (…) to keep at a greateror lesser distance from what it tells. The narrative can also choose toregulate the information it delivers, not with a sort of even screening,



but according to the capacities of knowledge of one or anotherparticipant in the story (a character or group of characters), with thenarrative adopting or seeming to adopt what we ordinarily call theparticipant’s ‘vision’ or ‘point of view;’ the narrative seems in that case(…) to take on, with regard to the story, one or another perspective.”(1980: 162)

As it can be seen, Genette’s analysis of modalities of regulation of narrativeinformation will be focused upon the two categories of distance andperspective.

Before presenting his own views on the issue of distance, Genettesummarizes the history of the concept whose origins date back to the GreekAntiquity, to Plato’s The Republic and his theory of the contrasting narrativemodes of mimesis and diegesis. Then, he briefly lists further changes intheory and terminology such as: Aristotle, with his slightly different theory onthe contrast of mimesis and diegesis, who ranges the pure narrative and thedirect representation as varieties of mimesis; the late nineteenth-century andearly twentieth-century novel theory of Henry James and his followersexpressing the contrast in the new terms of showing and telling; and WayneBooth’s criticism of the neo-Aristotelian interpretation of mimesis. In thislarger context of the centuries-long debate on the dichotomic distance-basedpair of mimesis and diegesis, Genette puts forward his own terms: narrativeof events and narrative of words.

The former, i.e., the narrative of events, is defined as a narrative“transcription of the (supposed) non-verbal into the verbal” whose illusion ofmimesis depends, like every illusion, on the highly variable relationshipbetween the sender and the receiver (1980: 165), that, in its turn, isinfluenced to a great extent by the evolution of aesthetic principles and theposition that individuals, groups, and periods take in the debate on thepossibilities of representing reality.

Going back to Plato’s comments with respect to mimesis and diegesis,Genette identifies as strictly textual mimetic factors “the quantity of narrativeinformation (a more developed or more detailed narrative) and the absence(or minimal presence) of the informer – in other words, of the narrator” (1980:166). Therefore, what is referred to as “showing” can be only a way oftelling which means either saying about it as much as one can, ensuring thedominance of the scene (as in James’s detailed narrative), or saying this“much” as little as possible, as in the cases that display a kind of (pseudo-)Flaubertian transparency of the narrator. (1980: 166) To make this contrastbetween mimesis and diegesis easier to understand, a mathematical-likeformula is suggested:

Information + informer = C“which implies that the quantity of information and the presence of theinformer are in inverse ratio” (1980: 166). Hence,

MIMESIS = A MAXIMUM OF INFORMATION AND A MINIMUM OF THEINFORMER

DIEGESIS = A MAXIMUM OF THE INFORMER AND A MINIMUM OFINFORMATION.

As for the narrative of words, the French critic includes under this labeldifferent states of the characters’ speech (either uttered or “inner”) which,according to their relation with the narrative distance, can be classified asfollows:



1. Narratized or narrated speech, obviously the most ‘distant’ and,generally, the most reduced. Genette identifies as a peculiar speciesof narratized discourse the narrative of an inner debate, or, as he putsit, the analysis or the narrative of thoughts or narratized innerspeech. E.g. uttered speech: “I informed my mother of my decision tomarry Albertine.”; inner speech: “I decided to marry Albertine.” (1980:171)

2. Transposed speech, in indirect style: “Although a little moremimetic than narrated speech, […] this form never gives the readerany guarantee – or above all any feeling – of literal fidelity to thewords ‘really’ uttered: the narrator’s presence is still too perceptible inthe very syntax of the sentence for the speech to impose itself withthe documentary autonomy of a quotation.” (1980: 171) E.g. utteredspeech: “I told my mother that I absolutely had to marry Albertine.”;inner speech: “I thought that I absolutely had to marry Albertine.”Words are not simply reported in subordinate clauses, butcondensed, integrated into the narrator’s own speech.

3. Reported speech, the most ‘mimetic’ form (that Plato rejected) inwhich the narrator pretends literally to give the floor to his character.E.g. “I said to my mother/ I thought: It is absolutely necessary tomarry Albertine.”

The second mode of regulating information that Genette terms asnarrative perspective arises from the choice of a certain, more or lessrestrictive, “point of view” and has been, as Genette rightfully remarks, one ofthe concepts most frequently studied by narrative technique theoretists sincethe end of the nineteenth century. Genette, however, chooses to challengemost of the theories on this subject on the ground of their promoting a“regrettable confusion” between the two different questions which heproposes to answer separately in the discussion of the categories of moodand voice. These questions are: (1) Who is the character whose point of vieworients the narrative perspective? (2) Who is the narrator? (1980: 186)

Trying to avoid the too specifically visual connotations of such termsas vision, field or point of view, inspired by Brooks and Warren’s expression“focus of narration,” Genette introduces his own term, i.e. focalization andre-discusses the classification of narratives according to the perspective theyare representative for as follows:

Nonfocalized narrative or narrative with zero focalization. This type offocalisation was questioned and eventually rejected in later theories ofthe narrative discourse.

Narrative with internal focalization:o Fixed (e.g. The Ambassadors, where everything passes

through Strether, or What Maisie Knew, where we almostnever leave the point of view of the little girl);

o Variable (e.g. Madame Bovary, where the focal character isfirst Charles, then Emma, then again Charles);

o Multiple (e.g. epistolary novels). Narrative with external focalization (e.g. Hemingway’s novellas “The

Killers” or “Hills Like White Elephants;” Walter Scott, Jules Verne,Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, etc.)



E.g.: “He [James Bond] saw a man in his fifties, still young-looking …”(internal focalization)

↓“I saw a man in his fifties, still young-looking …”

E.g.: “The tinkling of ice cubes against the glass seemed to awaken in Bonda sudden inspiration…”

↓external focalization, given the narrator’s marked ignorance with

respect to the hero’s real thoughts. (1980: 193-4)

2.1.3. Voice: Time of the Narrating. Narrative Levels. “Person”

The last major category that Genette discusses is that of voice, theanalysis of which should not be limited, as the theorist shows, to “the personwho carries out or submits to the action, but also the person (the same oneor another) who reports it, and, if need be, all those people who participate,even though passively, in this narrating activity.” (1980: 213) However, alongthe years, narratologists have been facing the difficulty of approaching thegenerating instance of narrative discourse, that Genette calls narrating.

“On the one hand, (…) critics restrict questions of narrative enunciating toquestions of ‘point of view’; on the other hand, they identify the narratinginstance with the instance of ‘writing’, the narrator with the author, andthe recipient of the narrative with the reader of the work…” (1980: 213)

Or the role of the narrator is fictitious. Consequently, Genette intends toconsider more thoroughly the narrating instance that can anyway vary in thecourse of a single narrative work, according to the traces it has left in thenarrative discourse it is assumed to have produced. A “tight web ofconnections among the narrating act, its protagonists, its spatio-temporaldeterminations, its relationship to the other narrating situations involved in thesame narrative, etc.” is thus examined in an attempt at characterising suchcategories subordinated to voice as time of the narrating, narrative leveland “person.” (1980: 215)

According to Genette, a story can be told without specifying the placewhere it happens or whether that place is more or less distant from the placewhere it is told, but it would be impossible not to locate it in time with respectto the narrating act by using different grammatical tenses. Thus, heconcludes that “the temporal determinations of the narrating instance aremanifestly more important than its spatial determinations.” (1980: 215) Thechief temporal determination of the narrating instance is its positionrelative to the story. According to this criterion, four types of narrative canbe distinguished: subsequent – the classical position of the past tense narrative, by far the

most frequent. The use of past tense is enough to make the narrativesubsequent, although without indicating the temporal interval separatingthe moment of the narrating from that of the story. As a rule, in the “third-person” narrative, the interval is indeterminate, yet, there are also cases ofconvergence or relative contemporaneity of story time and narrating timemarked by the use of the present tense, either at the beginning (e.g. TomJones) or at the end (e.g. Madame Bovary). Genette considers such casesworth mentioning as they reveal “a temporal isotopy between the story andits narrator, an isotopy which until then was hidden” (1980: 221). As for the



“first-person” narratives, this isotopy is evident from the very beginning andthe final convergence is the rule. (e.g. Robinson Crusoe)

prior – predictive narrative, generally in the future tense, but notprohibited from being conjugated in the present, which has been lessused than the other type of narrating, even in the novels of anticipation.(1980: 219-20)

simultaneous – narrative in the present contemporaneous with theaction, which, in principle, should eliminate any sort of interference ortemporal game. However, the blending of the instances can function intwo opposite directions, according to whether the emphasis is put on thestory or on the narrative discourse. In the first case, the present-tensenarrative of the “behaviourist” type and strictly of the moment (seeHemingway or the French “New Novel”) may seem like objective, but in thesecond case, when emphasis is laid on the narrating itself (see thenarratives with interior monologues), the simultaneousness operates infavour of the discourse and the action is reduced, even abolished. All inall, as Genette seems to suggests, the use of the present tense is not theguarantee of the equilibrium of instances. (1980: 218-9)

interpolated – between the moments of the action. It is the most complextype as it involves narrating with several instances and the very closeentanglement of the story and the narrating. One of the best cases inpoint is the epistolary novel with several correspondents in which theletter is at the same time a medium of the narrative and an element of theplot. Furthermore, “the extreme closeness of story to narrating produces[…] a very subtle effect of friction […] between the slight temporaldisplacement of the narrative of events (‘Here is what happened to metoday’) and the complete simultaneousness in the report of thoughts andfeelings (‘Here is what I think about it this evening’).” (1980: 217-8)

Next, Genette proceeds to defining the differences in level betweennarrating instances in the following terms: “any event a narrative recountsis at a diegetic level immediately higher than the level at which thenarrating act producing this narrative is placed.” (1980: 228) The firstlevel is the extradiegetic level, followed by the diegetic/ intradiegetic level,whereas the second degree narrative belongs to the metadiegetic level.

METADIEGETIC INTRADIEGETIC EXTRADIEGETIC

The first-degree narrator

The characters of the first-degreenarrative

+The narrator of the second-degree

narrativeThe characters of the second-degree narrative

+The narrator of the third-degree

narrative etc.



Genette clearly emphasises the fact that the extradiegetic should not betaken for real historical existence, just as the diegetic or the metadiegeticshould not be confounded with fiction.

Plenty of novels in the history of the genre display transitions from onelevel to another. Genette calls such transitions metalepses, achieved by thenarrating and consisting precisely of “introducing into one situation, by meansof a discourse, the knowledge of another situation.” (1980: 234) Sterne’sTristram Shandy is among the most famous cases in point with its intrusionsof the extradiegetic narrator/ narratee into the diegetic universe (or the otherway round).1 The effect thus achieved is either comical (see Sterne) orfantastic.

When finally discussing the category of person, Genette first justifieshis use of the “first-person” and “third-person” labels in between invertedcommas. This is his way of showing that he considers such labelsinadequate because “they stress variation in the element of the narrativesituation that is in fact invariant – […] the presence (explicit or implicit) of the‘person’ of the narrator.” (1980: 243-4) The presence of the narrator isinvariantly in “the first person.” Genette explains that the presence of first-person verbs in a narrative text can refer to two different situations that thenarrative analysis must distinguish (although grammar renders themidentical): the narrator’s designation of himself as such (I) and the identity ofperson between the narrator and one of the characters in the story. The term“first-person narrative” refers only to the second situation, but the narratorcan interfere as such, in the first person, virtually in any narrative. Thequestion that really raises then is “whether or not the narrator can use thefirst person to designate one of his characters” (1980: 244). In answering thisquestion, Genette distinguishes between two types of narrative:

with the narrator absent from the story (s)he tells –heterodiegetic;

with the narrator present as a character in the story (s)he tells –homodiegetic.

Of course, there is a certain dissymmetry between the two types sinceabsence is absolute, but presence has degrees. Therefore, Genette actuallydifferentiates two varieties within the homodiegetic type:

the narrator is the hero of his narrative (autodiegetic). the narrator plays only a secondary role, which turns out to be

a role of observer and witness.Taking then the narrator’s position on the narrative levels and its relationshipwith the story as main criteria of classification, Genette devises a four-termtypology:

1 In his analysis in narratological terms of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Jeremy J. Williams questions thecorrectness of Genette’s statement that “Sterne pushed the thing so far as to entreat the intervention ofthe reader, whom he beseeched to close the door or help Mr. Shandy get back to his bed.” (1980:234). According to Williams, such a statement is based on a mistake of identification: Tristram thenarrator is not entreating the real reader, but the narratee. “This slip on Genette’s part,” as Williamsputs it, might be explained by a certain tendency in thinking about narrative: “that ‘authors’ give ‘higher’or more privileged commentary, whereas the level can logically be no more literal or less fictitious thanany other level.” (1998: 38) It is a problem that comes from describing the real public as extradiegetic:“While there is a certain sense in which the narrator is external (superordinate) to the story he tells, asthe actual reader is not part of it either, this grossly elides the signal differences between real peopleand fictive characters. That narrator is only defined in the economy of the figuration of the narrative,whereas people (…) are not.” (1998:39)



extradiegetic –heterodiegetic: a narrator in the first degree tells astory (s)he is absent from. (e.g. Homer);

extradiegetic – homodiegetic: a narrator in the first degree tellshis/her own story. (e.g. Gil Blas);

intradiegetic – heterodiegetic: a narrator in the second degree tellsa story (s)he is absent from. (e.g. Scheherazade);

intradiegetic – homodiegetic: a narrator in the second degree tellshis/her own story. (e.g. Ulysses).

Presence/Absence in thestory

Narrative LevelAbsent from the story Present in the story

First-degree narrative extradiegetic –heterodiegetic

extradiegetic –homodiegetic

Second-degree narrative intradiegetic –heterodiegetic

intradiegetic –homodiegetic

2.2. Wayne Booth and the Rhetoric of Fiction

Regarding other possible approaches to the narrator as a narrativeinstance, special reference should be made to Wayne Booth’s, as developedin his ground-breaking study The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961, 1983). (WayneBooth is an American literary critic affiliated to the Chicago School of LiteraryCriticism.)

On the one hand, an innovative point of Booth’s theory is his definitionof the self-conscious narrator. This kind of narrator shatters any illusionthat (s)he is telling something that has actually happened by revealing to thereader that the narration is a work of fictional art, or by flaunting thediscrepancies between its patent fictionality and the reality it seems torepresent.

On the other hand, next to Genette’s contribution to the developmentof narratology, Wayne Booth’s should be paid due respect for having clarifiedthe distinctions between different instances involved in the communicationprocess in literature. (Genette himself acknowledges this merit of Booth’stheory). Thus, Booth explained that the writer has the goal of ‘informing’ thereader about a particular fictional world, but he also needs to achieve arapport with his readers, an identity of viewpoint whereby the contents offiction will be interpreted and evaluated in an appropriate way. Yet, this iswhere several difficulties seem to arise: there is one addresser, but a largenumber of addressees whom the writer has never met and who will receivethe written message in a context that the writer knows or assumes littleabout. One result of the relative uncertainty of the situational context of theliterary message is the degree of redundancy. The novelist tends to say thesame thing in a number of different ways and on different levels of structure.Both events and different ways of constructing the narrative movementcombine together to embody different themes.

Although the real-life author of the novel is in the dark about hisreader from many points of view, he can, of course, assume that he shareswith his readers a common fond of knowledge and experience. Thisbackground knowledge can include not just common inferences, but also



knowledge of certain well-known historical events and literary works, andeven quotations from the latter.

A writer will allude to things which is reasonable to expect theeducated readers of his day to know, but which a later reader will have tomake himself positively aware of. For example, to understand Fielding’sShamela, the modern reader will have to read Richardson’s Pamela first tobe able to fully appreciate the satire.

Because the author can assume knowledge which any particularreader might not necessarily have, we have to conclude that the addresseein literary communication is not the reader but what Wayne Booth called the“mock reader”, i.e. the implied reader, a hypothetical personage who shareswith the author not just background knowledge, but also a set ofpresuppositions, sympathies and standards of what is pleasant andunpleasant, good and bad, right and wrong, etc. For a reader to suspend hisdisbelief and become the appropriate reader, he has not just to make himselfaware of certain facts, but also make all kinds of allowances, linguistic,social, moral, for the reader whom the author is addressing.

Booth also noticed that just as there is an implied reader betweenthe reader and the work, so there is what he called an implied authorbetween the author and the text. Otherwise, we would have to ascribeautomatically the views expressed through a work to the author himself.Authors may very often believe the views which they are putting forward butthere is no necessary reason why they should, and in the normal situation,where we do not know the author’s views from some external source, it is notreasonable to make the transference from the work to the man. We usuallydo not know the opinion of the real author, except by inference from what hewrites. (Booth in Leech, 1992: 259-261)

Finally, to round off the brief presentation of Booth’s theory, “internal”communication on the level of the narrative text itself should be discussed aslinking a certain type of narrator to the fictional representation of the readerin the form of the narratee. Booth introduced the dichotomy reliable/unreliable narrator in which the latter stands for one whose perception,interpretation and evaluation of the matters (s)he narrates do not coincidewith the opinions and norms implied by the author, which the author expectsthe alert reader to share.


Analyse the fragments below using Genette’s and Booth’s interpretationmodels, making comments (where possible) on: a) the temporal relationsbetween narrative and story (order, duration, frequency); b) the modalities ofnarrative representation (distance, narrative perspective); c) the way in whichthe narrative reflects the narrating process (time of the narrating, narrativelevels, narrator type); d) the instances involved in the process of literarycommunication.

a) I had been now thirteen days on shore, and had been eleven times onboard the ship, in which time I had brought away all that one pair of handscould well be supposed capable to bring; though I believe verily, had thecalm weather held, I should have brought away the whole ship, piece bypiece. But preparing the twelfth time to go on board, I found the wind beganto rise: however, at low water I went on board, and though I thought I had



rummaged the cabin so effectually that nothing more could be found, yet Idiscovered a locker with drawers in it, in one of which I found two or threerazors, and one pair of large scissors, with some ten or a dozen of goodknives and forks: in another I found about thirty-six pounds value in money -some European coin, some Brazil, some pieces of eight, some gold, andsome silver.

I smiled to myself at the sight of this money: "O drug!" said I, aloud,"what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me - no, not the taking off theground; one of those knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of usefor thee - e'en remain where thou art, and go to the bottom as a creaturewhose life is not worth saying." However, upon second thoughts I took itaway; and wrapping all this in a piece of canvas, I began to think of makinganother raft; but while I was preparing this, I found the sky overcast, and thewind began to rise, and in a quarter of an hour it blew a fresh gale from theshore. It presently occurred to me that it was in vain to pretend to make a raftwith the wind offshore; and that it was my business to be gone before the tideof flood began, otherwise I might not be able to reach the shore at all.Accordingly, I let myself down into the water, and swam across the channel,which lay between the ship and the sands, and even that with difficultyenough, partly with the weight of the things I had about me, and partly theroughness of the water; for the wind rose very hastily, and before it was quitehigh water it blew a storm.

(Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1994: 60-1)

b) I found presently, that whether I was a whore or a wife, I was to pass for awhore here, so I let that go. I told her it was true, as she said, but that,however, if I must tell her my case, I must tell it her as it was; so I related it toher as short as I could, and I concluded it to her thus. 'I trouble you with allthis, madam,' said I, 'not that, as you said before, it is much to the purpose inyour affair, but this is to the purpose, namely, that I am not in any pain aboutbeing seen, or being public or concealed, for 'tis perfectly indifferent to me;but my difficulty is, that I have no acquaintance in this part of the nation.'

'I understand you, madam' says she; 'you have no security to bring toprevent the parish impertinences usual in such cases, and perhaps,' saysshe, 'do not know very well how to dispose of the child when it comes.' 'Thelast,' says I, 'is not so much my concern as the first.' 'Well, madam,'answered the midwife, 'dare you put yourself into my hands? I live in such aplace; though I do not inquire after you, you may inquire after me. My nameis B----; I live in such a street'--naming the street--' at the sign of the Cradle.My profession is a midwife, and I have many ladies that come to my house tolie in. I have given security to the parish in general terms to secure them fromany charge from whatsoever shall come into the world under my roof. I havebut one question to ask in the whole affair, madam,' says she, 'and if that beanswered you shall be entirely easy for all the rest.'

I presently understood what she meant, and told her, 'Madam, Ibelieve I understand you. I thank God, though I want friends in this part of theworld, I do not want money, so far as may be necessary, though I do notabound in that neither': this I added because I would not make her expectgreat things. 'Well, madam,' says she, 'that is the thing indeed, without whichnothing can be done in these cases; and yet,' says she, 'you shall see that Iwill not impose upon you, or offer anything that is unkind to you, and if you



desire it, you shall know everything beforehand, that you may suit yourself tothe occasion, and be neither costly or sparing as you see fit.'

(Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, 1994: 178-9)

c) ‘Are all the great Folks wicked then?’ says Fanny. ‘To be sure there aresome Exceptions, answered Joseph. Some Gentlemen of our Cloth reportcharitable Actions done by their Lords and Masters, and I have heard 'SquirePope, the great Poet, at my Lady's Table, tell Stories of a Man that lived at aPlace called Ross, and another at the Bath, one Al—Al —I forget his Name,but it is in the Book of Verses. This Gentleman hath built up a stately Housetoo, which the Squire likes very well; but his Charity is seen farther than hisHouse, tho' it stands on a Hill, ay, and brings him more Honour. It was hisCharity that put him upon the Book, where the Squire says he puts all thosewho deserve it; and to be sure, as he lives among all the great People, if therewere any such, he would know them.’ —This was all of Mr. Joseph Andrews'sSpeech which I could get him to recollect, which I have delivered as near aswas possible in his own Words, with a very small Embellishment. But I believethe Reader hath not been a little surprised at the long Silence of ParsonAdams, especially as so many Occasions offer'd themselves to exert hisCuriosity and Observation. The truth is, he was fast asleep, and had so beenfrom the beginning of the preceding Narrative: and indeed if the Readerconsiders that two Nights had past since he had closed his Eyes, he will notwonder at his Repose, tho' even Henley himself, or as great an Orator (if anysuch be) had been in his Rostrum or Tub before him.

(Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, 1973: 182)

d) The lady, whose resolution had given way to terror the moment she hadquitted Manfred, continued her flight to the bottom of the principal staircase.There she stopped, not knowing whither to direct her steps, nor how toescape from the impetuosity of the Prince. The gates of the castle, she knew,were locked, and guards placed in the court. Should she, as her heartprompted her, go and prepare Hippolita for the cruel destiny that awaited her,she did not doubt but Manfred would seek her there, and that his violencewould incite him to double the injury he meditated, without leaving room forthem to avoid the impetuosity of his passions. Delay might give him time toreflect on the horrid measures he had conceived, or produce somecircumstance in her favour, if she could--for that night, at least--avoid hisodious purpose. Yet where conceal herself? How avoid the pursuit he wouldinfallibly make throughout the castle?

As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she recollected asubterraneous passage which led from the vaults of the castle to the churchof St. Nicholas. Could she reach the altar before she was overtaken, sheknew even Manfred's violence would not dare to profane the sacredness ofthe place; and she determined, if no other means of deliverance offered, toshut herself up for ever among the holy virgins whose convent wascontiguous to the cathedral. In this resolution, she seized a lamp that burnedat the foot of the staircase, and hurried towards the secret passage.

The lower part of the castle was hollowed into several intricatecloisters; and it was not easy for one under so much anxiety to find the doorthat opened into the cavern. An awful silence reigned throughout thosesubterraneous regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that shookthe doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-



echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. Every murmur struck her withnew terror; yet more she dreaded to hear the wrathful voice of Manfredurging his domestics to pursue her.

(Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, 2001: 26)

e) --How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter? Itold you in it, That my mother was not a papist.--Papist! You told me no suchthing, Sir.--Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again, that I told you as plain,at least, as words, by direct inference, could tell you such a thing.--Then, Sir,I must have miss'd a page.--No, Madam, you have not miss'd a word.--Then Iwas asleep, Sir.--My pride, Madam, cannot allow you that refuge.--Then, Ideclare, I know nothing at all about the matter.-- That, Madam, is the veryfault I lay to your charge; and as a punishment for it, I do insist upon it, thatyou immediately turn back, that is as soon as you get to the next full stop,and read the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this penance uponthe lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives;and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she returns back:--'Tis torebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,--ofreading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deeperudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it shouldbe, would infallibly impart with them--The mind should be accustomed tomake wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; thehabitude of which made Pliny the younger affirm, 'That he never read a bookso bad, but he drew some profit from it.' The stories of Greece and Rome,run over without this turn and application,--do less service, I affirm it, than thehistory of Parismus and Parismenus, or of the Seven Champions of England,read with it.

--But here comes my fair lady. Have you read over again the chapter,Madam, as I desired you?--You have: And did you not observe the passage,upon the second reading, which admits the inference?--Not a word like it!Then, Madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the chapter,where I take upon me to say, 'It was necessary I should be born before I waschristen'd.' Had my mother, Madam, been a Papist, that consequence didnot follow. (The Romish Rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases ofdanger, before it is born;--but upon this proviso, That some part or other ofthe child's body be seen by the baptizer:--But the Doctors of the Sorbonne,by a deliberation held amongst them, April 10, 1733,--have enlarged thepowers of the midwives, by determining, That though no part of the child'sbody should appear,--that baptism shall, nevertheless, be administered to itby injection,--par le moyen d'une petite canulle,--Anglice a squirt.--'Tis verystrange that St. Thomas Aquinas, who had so good a mechanical head, bothfor tying and untying the knots of school-divinity,--should, after so much painsbestowed upon this,- -give up the point at last, as a second La choseimpossible,--'Infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth St. Thomas!)baptizari possunt nullo modo.'--O Thomas! Thomas! If the reader has thecuriosity to see the question upon baptism by injection, as presented to theDoctors of the Sorbonne, with their consultation thereupon, it is as follows.)

It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more so to theRepublick of letters;--so that my own is quite swallowed up in theconsideration of it,--that this self-same vile pruriency for fresh adventures inall things, has got so strongly into our habit and humour,-- and so whollyintent are we upon satisfying the impatience of our concupiscence that way,--



that nothing but the gross and more carnal parts of a composition will godown:--The subtle hints and sly communications of science fly off, like spiritsupwards,--the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one and theother are as much lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom ofthe ink-horn.

I wish the male-reader has not pass'd by many a one, as quaint andcurious as this one, in which the female-reader has been detected. I wish itmay have its effects;--and that all good people, both male and female, fromexample, may be taught to think as well as read.

(Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1997: 48)

Section 3. Style in Fiction


SECTION 3. Style in Fiction

3.1. Speech and Character

As Geoffrey Leech points out, “the details of [a character’s]appearance, behaviour and personal qualities may be specified to a greaterand lesser extent; they may be relatively realistic (in the sense of beingcredible and consistent) or not; they may be relatively universal in theircharacteristics (representative of character types) or may be relativelyindividuated. We must also recognize the importance of inference in thedetermination of character: in novels, as in real life, a person’s motives andcharacter are inferred from outside behaviour: from actions, from demeanor,and also from speech.” (1992: 171)

Therefore, fictional speech (here including the special case ofimaginary speech that many realistic novelists resort to in order to conveythe hidden purport of a person’s behaviour) is a revealing indicator ofcharacter. It may aspire to a special kind of realism, a special kind ofauthenticity, in representing the kind of language which a reader mayrecognize, by observation, as being characteristic of a particular situation.

3.1.1. Realism in Conversation

In Geoffrey Leech’s terms, realism in conversation is the standard bywhich we judge a writer’s ability to render in writing the characteristics ofspoken conversational language.

Of course, as stated in a previous section, there cannot be absoluterealism of reported speech in the fictional text. There will always be instanceswhere certain distance is taken from the ‘raw realities’ of spoken language.

For instance, real-life conversation may be often display featureswhich interrupt the fluency of speech that Leech calls features of normalnon-fluency, i.e.:

- hesitation pauses/ voice fillers: e.g. ‘er…’/ ‘erm…’;- false starts: the needless repetition of a word or the reformulation of

what has been said, resulting in an ungrammatical sequence of words;- syntactic anomalies: e.g. ‘We’ve got … you’ve got to take …’ →

Though not entirely ungrammatical, they are unacceptable in writtencomposition. (1992: 161)

- tag questions/ constructions: e.g. ‘you know, …’ / ‘…, isn’t it?’;- initiating signals: e.g. ‘Well, …’ / ‘Oh, …’ . Just like the tag questions,

they act, to some extent, as pause fillers. (1992: 162)Furthermore, on the syntactic level, real-life conversation tends

towards coordination rather than subordination of clauses, for coordinationsimplifies the planning of sentence structure.

On the semantic level, there is a tendency to use cliché expressionswhich require no linguistic inventiveness.

Nevertheless, authors of literary fiction do not aim at completelyrealistic representation of the features of ordinary conversation and mightchoose to depart, to different extents, from the realistic representation of



speech. (1992: 163) Generally speaking, features of normal non-fluency,which appear as an impediment rather than a contribution to communicativediscourse, are omitted. As they are always overlooked by participants in real-life conversations, the omission does not impair the realistic discourse. Yet,there are cases in which writers choose to preserve them (i.e. suchinteractional signals) precisely to endow them with additional communicativevalues in the sense that they may indicate something of the speaker’scharacter or state of mind. (1992: 164-165)

3.1.2. Dialect and Idiolect

Dialects may be defined as varieties of language which arelinguistically marked off from other varieties and which correspond togeographical, class or other divisions of society.

The idiolect is the linguistic “thumbprint” of a particular person. Inother words, it encompasses the features of speech that mark her/ him off asan individual from those around her/him. (Leech, 1992: 167)

Both dialect and idiolect are most noticeable on the graphologicallevel.

Once again, there is no question of absolute realism. This pointbecomes clearer when considering the phenomenon of eye-dialect, wherethe impression of rendering non-standard spelling is pure illusion. Its use isusually attached to lower-class characters. In fact, such cases as ’wos’ usedinstead of ‘was’; ‘an’/’n’ instead of ‘and’, etc., occur naturally in Englishspeech without any respect to dialect. (e.g.: ‘cats’n dogs’) But if we meetsuch a non-standard spelling in fiction, it is the non-standardness that strikesus, not the supposed phonological reality behind it. Many realists werescrupulous observers of local dialects, hence the use of dialect markers tocreate the ‘living flavour’ and to achieve the goal of authenticity. Yet, whenexaggeratedly used, they may result in unintelligibility. (Leech, 1992: 169)

In terms of function, the following associations can be made:DIALECT SYMBOLISM(the general characteristics (the tendency to universalize,of a group of people) to typify)

IDIOLECT VERISIMILITUDE(the individualizing features of language) (the tendency to evoke reality

by particularizing)

Special mention must also be made of the distancing and stigmatizingeffect of using non-standard forms of standard language, including deviantspellings. The character deviates from the norm of the author’s standardlanguage using non-standard speech, which makes her/him an object ofcomedy and satire. (Leech, 1992: 170)

3.2. Narrative and Stylistic Structures

There is an analogical relation between language and the fictionalworld. According to G. Leech, this analogy must be studied in order tounderstand a piece of fiction as a particular realization of more abstract



patterns or narrative structures. Subtly developed by the Frenchstructuralists (Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, André Greimas, etc.), it hasengendered a “grammar of narrative” that has subsequently enabledtheorists to pursue the analogy between choices of rendering made at thefictional level and stylistic choices at the linguistic level. (1992: 173)

Just as there are three functions of stylistic choice – theinterpersonal, textual and ideational –, there are also three correspondingfunctions in the rendering of fictions: point of view, sequencing anddescriptive focus.

3.2.1. Fictional Sequencing

Generally speaking, the dominant consideration in determining thechoice of sequencing is plain objective chronology.

However, other principles, such as psychological immediacy, may takeprecedence over chronology. In this case, reference is made topsychological sequencing, i.e., the order in which a character comes tolearn about the components of the fiction. (Leech, 1992: 177)

Finally, in order to answer the question related to “the appropriate orderin which the reader should learn the elements of the fiction”, Geoffrey Leechalso brings into discussion what he calls presentational sequencing, whichcan overlap the others, but may as well be independent. According to Leech,the best order of presentation is to go from elements which presuppose theleast prior knowledge to those which presuppose the most. When this order isabandoned, the author has some good reasons for doing so.

The author is free to deviate from the linearity of the model, holdingback information which is necessary for understanding an earlier piece of thenarrative until later. This heightens the element of mystery or suspense whichis an important ingredient in storytelling. By this game of things known andthings guessed, anticipated, or inferred, the story progresses and holds itsinterest for the reader.

A point of interest in this respect is the beginning of the fictional textwhich, according to the basic principle, should be the point of leastpresupposition. (E.g. in fairy tales) In modern fiction, nevertheless,beginnings in media res (‘in the middle of things’) are rather favoured;certain things are taken for granted, though the reader can only work themout for himself by reading on. (1992: 179)

As for the end of a novel, according to the “natural” principle ofinformation presentation, it should be the point at which fiction reachescompletion, in the sense that nothing of importance remains provisional: allquestions are answered, all presuppositions are satisfied, all mysteries aresolved. But, again, the writer may frustrate conventional expectations byleaving things unresolved at the conclusion (open-ended fiction). (Leech,1992: 180)

3.2.2. Descriptive Focus

It may be defined as encompassing the ideational choices of meaningthrough which “reality” is portrayed. Description can concentrate on oneaspect and ignore another.

Two types of contrasts could be particularly referred to:- physical / abstract description;



- subjective/ objective description.Physical description covers things which have space/time extension andphysical properties (size, shape, colour, movement, speed, etc.) Abstractdescription focuses more on mental and social properties, states and events.The type of description implicitly influences the choices in terms of lexicalcategories (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs).

In some areas, the physical and the abstract are virtually inextricable.E.g.: The verb ‘to ask’ involves both a mental event and the physical act ofutterance. So, the difference between the physical and the abstract inpractice is not an absolute distinction, but a matter of degree and emphasis.

Similarly, there is a common ground between subjective and objectivedescription. Large objects may appear small from a distance or we maysubjectively be aware of things which have no objective existence at all.

All in all, the effects of the descriptive focus may largely vary inliterature ranging from estrangement or empathic response from the readerto objectivity or vividness (of subjective realism). (Leech, 1992: 180-185)

3.2.3. Fictional and Discoursal Points of View

Corresponding to the interpersonal function of style, there is theslanting of the fictional world towards “reality” as apprehended by a particularparticipant/ set of participants in the fiction. Geoffrey Leech refers to thisaspect of fiction as the fictional point of view defined as the telling of thestory through the words or thoughts of a particular person/reflector. It istherefore limited to what that character-reflector could reasonably beexpected to know or infer. (1992: 174-175)

It is true that the demarcation of the fictional point of view becomesparticularly difficult to determine where the narrative refers to psychologicalevents and states: perceptions, volitions, emotions, thoughts, judgments, etc.But, as Leech points out, it is natural and almost automatic human activity toinfer such mental phenomena from outward behaviour. This leads to thelimitation of omniscience to the “inside view.” There is also the possibility ofcreating the opposite effect: the author limits his narrative to an external viewof a character, achieving an effect of “estrangement” by denying himselfknowledge of what is inside the character’s mind. (1992: 175-176)

The fictional point of view must be clearly distinguished from whatLeech calls the discoursal point of view associated with the narrator/theimplied author. The discoursal point of view may be defined as therelationship expressed through discourse structure between the impliedauthor, or some other addresser, and the fiction. That indicates from thebeginning the possibility of discussing, under the “umbrella” of this concept,such critical terms as irony, tone and distance which imply attitude andjudgment.

The (implied) author may make his attitude towards characters andevents clear by direct address, but, on the other hand, his point of view mayalso be given ‘bias’ within the narration itself by the use of language which,either in its sense or its connotations, expresses some elements of valuepertaining to one or more of the following three scales/spheres of value:

- a sphere of moral disposition;- a purely social scale of accepted behaviour, of standing in

the community;- a sphere of emotive attitudes.



Thus he may direct the reader’s value responses to the characters andevents in the novel. The reader’s ‘value picture’ of a character or even of thewhole fiction may be built up into a composition of associated and contrastedkinds of value judgments. (Leech, 1992: 273-274)

The value picture of a novel is multi-faceted, a matter not only of co-existing spheres of value, but of co-existing levels of discourse as well(character, narrator, implied author, real author). Sometimes the valuepictures corresponding to these levels may coincide (e.g. in Dickens’s DavidCopperfield). There are, however, cases in which the standards of judgmenton one level contrast with those on another level. The best case in point isthat of narratives displaying what Wayne Booth calls unreliable narrators. Insuch cases of value contrast, there is what Booth identifies as “a secretcommunion” between (implied) author and (implied) reader. This conspiracyis founded on shared standards of evaluation and on the manner in whichthese are controlled and developed through the novel. This is actually onefeature which distinguishes fiction from other kinds of discourse. (Leech,1992: 276-277)

3.2.4. Irony. Tone. Distance

Based on the “secret communion” between author and reader, as W.Booth put it, irony implies “a double significance which arises from thecontrast in values associated with two different points of view.” (Leech, 1992:278) It is a wide-ranging phenomenon which can be manifested in a singlesentence or may extend over a whole novel.

The most usual kind of irony is the contrast between the point of viewstated/ implied in some part of the fiction, and the assumed point of view ofthe (implied) author, and hence of the (implied) reader. On a small scale, itmay be located in details of the lexical and syntactic structures.

In a broad sense, the ‘authorial’ tone is given by “the stance orattitude taken by an (implied) author towards his readers and towards (partsof) his message.” (Leech, 1992: 280) The stylistic markers of authorial tonemay vary from irony (in its multiple manifestations) and evaluative terms andinferences to complex rhetorical patterns of direct and/or indirect address tothe (implied) reader.

Authorial tone goes together with varying degrees of distance whichmust be distinguished between: the authorial address to the reader may berelatively distant, formal, public, or else relatively intimate, colloquial,private. Furthermore, distance may also be given by the variable relationbetween the (implied) author and the subject matter, which is a function ofthe difference between the knowledge, sympathy and values of the impliedauthor and those of the characters and society which he portrays. The(implied) author may artfully delay and disguise the judgment of character,taking the role of a guide/mentor/stage-manager, controlling the reader’sresponse. (Leech, 1992: 280-283)

3.2.5. Narrators and Discourse Situations

In an attempt at representing the relations between different discourselevels, Geoffrey Leech proposes the following diagram:



Fig. 8.5. – Leech, 1992: 269

In analysing discourse situations that involve I-narrators (as GeoffreyLeech puts it, 1992: 262), special attention must be paid to the fact that thenarrator may well be talking to someone distinct from the reader. Forexample, in the epistolary novel, there are a number of I-narrators andconfidants, none of whom can be assumed to be the (implied) author or the(implied) reader. The impression that the narrator, having no interlocutor,talks to us directly leads to collapsing on the addressee’s side. The choice ofa ‘first-person’/homodiegetic narrator where the ‘I’ is also a primary characterin the story produces a personal relationship with the reader which inevitablytends to bias the reader in favour of the narrator-character. It is very possibleby the use of this device to convert the reader to views (s)he would notnormally hold for the duration of the story (hence the need to postulate animplied reader). (Leech, 1992: 262-266)

As for heterodiegetic narratives, the presence at the textual level ofthe third-person pronouns traditionally indicates that the novelist employs an‘impersonal’ style of narration, since her/his narrator avoids making referenceto himself.

One of the advantages of this narrative technique is that the absenceof an ‘I’ invites the reader to assume that there is no explicit ‘you’. Thenarration is therefore presented to the reader directly, without anintermediary. The lack of an ‘I’ also invites the reader to collapse theaddresser side of the novel’s discourse structure, so that implied author andnarrator become merged. The narrator stands in the place of the impliedauthor and takes on his absolute knowledge (omniscience).

The (implied) author may make her/his presence felt in the text,ostensibly guiding the reader towards particular judgments on characters andevents through rhetorical questions, shifts in verb tense from past to generic,‘timeless’ present or in grammatical person from the third to the first person.In a consistently constructed third-person narrative, the (implied) author‘appears to disappear.’ It actually does not because there is inevitably anaddresser to produce the message and that addresser is the author.Because messages are, by their nature, communicated by an addresser, thenovelist can never really let the novel tell itself. But he can make it appear to



do so by the selection of the linguistic features that go with one mode ofaddress rather than another. (Leech, 1992: 266-269)

The conversations which the characters have with one another andwhich the narrator reports are embedded within the talk between the narratorand his interlocutor.

The use of the ‘third-person’/heterodiegetic narration generallyseparates the level of character discourse from that of narrator discourse. Butthe choice of a ‘first-person’/homodiegetic narration allows a further kind ofmerger of roles, i.e., a merger of the character’s and narrator’s levels ofdiscourse. In this latter case, the conflation of the levels of discoursebecomes instrumental in conveying the confusion and immediacy of thesituation narrated.

The levels of discourse, particularly where the author withholds thesignals of transition from one level to another, can be a rich source ofambiguity and complexity of interpretation. (Leech, 1992: 269-272)

3.3. The Rhetoric of the Text

3.3.1. Coordination and Subordination

The contrast between simplicity and complexity lies in the differencebetween experiencing events one by one, in the case of coordination, andexperiencing them as an articulate complex whole, in the case ofsubordination. Coordination gives clauses (and other units) equal syntacticstatus, while subordination places one clause/unit in a dependent status, aspart of a main clause. The effect of subordination as a form of syntacticsalience is then that it demotes the phenomenon it describes into a“subservient circumstance” which cannot be understood except in terms of itspart in the main clause. “A subordinate is less salient in the sense ofexpressing information which is at least partially known or presupposed inadvance.” (Leech, 1992: 221)

In short, the general principle of subordination (always subject toexceptions) may be described, in Geoffrey Leech’s terms, as follows: “If A issubordinate to B, then A is the circumstantial background against which B ishighlighted.” (1992: 221)

Discussing in more details the way in which subordination may beused to achieve different effects at the level of the fictional text, GeoffreyLeech distinguishes between three types of subordinate/dependentconstituents illustrated in the examples below:

e.g.: Sophia sailed into the room [with her eyes ablaze.]↨

Left in the final position, this dependent constituent functionsas a trailing constituent.

e.g.: [With her eyes ablaze,] Sophia sailed into the room.↨

Moved in initial position, it becomes an anticipatory constituent.

e.g.: Sophia, [with her eyes ablaze], sailed into the room.↨

In medial position, it is described as a parenthetical dependentconstituent. (Leech, 1992: 225-226)



Depending on the type of constituents that play the main part in the sentencestructure, further distinction is made between the following types of structures:

The periodic sentence structure. In a strict sense, it may be definedas one which saves its main clause to the end. More loosely defined, itstands for any sentence in which anticipatory constituents – i.e.,subordinate or dependent constituents which are non-final (i.e.,anticipatory and/or parenthetical) – play a major part.

Unlike trailing constituents which do not involve suspense andcan be interpreted as we go along, anticipatory constituents – whetherclauses or phrases – function as elements of suspense into syntax.They must be held in memory until the major constituent of which theyare a part has been interpreted. The effect of suspense depends onthe size of the anticipatory elements.

The function of the periodic sentence structures is to lenddramatic quality to the text. They combine the principle of climax2 withthe principle of subordination and so progress from a build-up oftension to a final climactic point of resolution. They have the quality ofconcentrating significance at one point in the sentence; enlightenmentcomes retrospectively, at the end, where all the elements of meaningfit synoptically into a whole. They give to both writer and reader asense of escaping from the “tyranny of succession”, since allmeanings are held in mind simultaneously not sequentially. (Leech,1992: 226-228)

The loose sentence structure. Unlike the periodic sentence structurethat contravenes what G. Leech calls the memory principle (apresumed principle of sentence construction that requires reducing theburden on the reader’s immediate syntactic memory), the loosesentence structure, based on trailing constituents, complies to it. Itis more “natural”, making things easy for the addressee by reducingthe amount of syntactic information that has to be stored in decoding.

Non-initial constituents of a coordinate structure may also beincluded among trailing constituents. (Leech, 1992: 228-230)

To summarize:ANTICIPATORY CONSTITUENTS

(‘ART’)TRAILING CONSTITUENTS

(‘NATURE’)Types:1. initial dependent constituents2. parenthetical constituents

Types:1. final dependent constituents2. non-initial coordinate constituents

Functions:- to create suspense;- to lend the discourse dramatic

quality;- to give rhetorical weight to the

discourse.

Functions:- to create the effect of simplicity,

directness, easiness, relaxation,informality, as they lack anticipatorytension;

- to give complexity to the expression,without, however, causing difficultiesin comprehension;

- to ensure the linear progress of thetext.

2 In a sequence of interrelated tone units, the final position tends to be the major focus of information.The principle of climax – “Last is the most important”. See Leech, 1992: 222-225.



3.3.2. Addresser-based Rhetoric. Writing Imitating Speech

Writers may wish to cultivate the impression of spontaneity and vigourwhich is associated with spoken language (for example, in fictional dialogueand stream-of–consciousness narratives) as an ingredient of the “authorialtone of voice.” That may be accounted for by the tendency of spokenlanguage to be extremely ‘loose’ in structure. “The last is the most important”principle clashes then with a tendency for the speaker to mention what ismost important first (the focal point of the message placed in the beginningby means of syntactic inversions, dislocations characteristic of ordinaryspeech). In some of these cases, the syntactic structure of the text seems tofavour the use of parentheses, especially parenthetical constructions whichare syntactically dislocated from their context. A parenthetical constituentruns counter to the memory principle: the addressee has to keep in store therest of the sentence while the parenthesis is being elaborated. But from aspeaker’s point of view, a parenthesis is in part a recuperatory mechanism, away of digressing from the main structure of the sentence in order to includesomething which, with more forethought, could have been integrated into thesyntax of the sentence. (Leech, 1992: 231-232)

3.3.3. Iconicity: The Imitation Principle

Literature follows a “principle of imitation”, in other words literaryexpression tends to have not only a presentational function (directedtowards the reader’s role as a decoder), but also a representationalfunction (miming the meaning that it expresses).

The signals or textual forms of an iconic code imitate the meaningsthat they represent.

In modern linguistics, language is perceived as essentially non-iconic(except perhaps the onomatopoeic words). Yet, according to Leech, iconicityis inherent in language. Thus, the syntactic relations between the wordscharacteristically imitate relations between the objects and the events whichthose words signify. Iconicity embraces not only onomatopoeia and soundsymbolism, but also the miming or enactment of meaning through patterns ofrhythm and syntax.

Two important instances of this syntactic iconicity should be, first of all,distinguished: chronological sequencing – since textual time imitates realtime, i.e. if A comes before B in the model of reality, then A comes before Bin the text – and juxtaposition.

Regarding the mimetic force of sequencing, reference must be madeto the presentational sequencing, which is not iconic, as opposed to thechronological and psychological sequencing as iconic. Chronologicalsequencing is iconic in the sense it imitates the purported sequence ofevents in the fictional world. Psychological sequencing is iconic in the sensethat the syntactic order appears to represent the order in which thingsspontaneously arise in the consciousness of the author. From a generalisedperspective, it covers the imitation of a fictional narrator’s or reflector’sthought processes as found pre-eminently in the stream-of-consciousnessprose. A subjective, sensory reality is projected through the distortion of thelinguistic medium (the ordering of impressions + the syntax).

Juxtaposition may be iconic in the sense that words which are close inthe text may evoke an impression of closeness or connectedness in fiction –



not only closeness in time, but psychological or locative relatedness. (Leech,1992: 233-242)

But, of, course, the possibilities of “form enacting meaning” could bevirtually unlimited – as unlimited as an author’s imagination power over theexpressiveness of language, and as the reader’s capacity to see theconnections. Iconicity rules then, like metaphor, on the intuitive recognition ofsimilarities between one field of reference (the form of language) andanother.

One of the best cases in point is Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.Sterne’s novel is iconic on two levels: “in the narrow scope of the sentence,the syntax dramatizes its own meaning, which is that digression is both anend in itself and also a means to the end of advancing the fiction; and on alarge scale, the syntax is an icon of the author’s modus operandi in the wholework.” (1992: 243)

3.3.4. Cohesion

The cohesion and coherence of the narrative discourse may beachieved by means of various devices which fall into two categories:

Cross-reference = the various means which language uses toindicate that ‘the same thing’ is being referred to or mentioned indifferent parts of the text.1. Definite reference: a) personal pronouns (he, she, it, they, etc.); b)the definite article (the); c) deictics (this, that, these, those, etc.); d)implied (same, different, other, else, such, etc.);2. Substitution: pro-forms (one, ones, do, so) which substitute for otherlinguistic expressions.3. Ellipsis: omission or deletion of elements whose meaning is‘understood’ because it is recoverable from the context.4. Formal repetition: repeated use of an expression which has alreadyoccurred in the context. Sometimes, it is favoured by the principle ofexpressive repetition giving emphasis or emotive heightening to therepeated meaning.5. Elegant variation: use of an alternative expression (not a pronoun ora substitute) as a replacement for an expression in the context.(Leech, 1992: 244)

The abundance of cross-reference means indicates that style isimmensely repetitive.

Linkage = the use of overt connectors: coordinating conjunctions (e.g.and, or, but, both ... and..., neither ... nor..., etc.), subordinatingconjunctions (so that, because, while, etc.), linking adverbials (for, so,yet, however, therefore, meanwhile, for example, etc.).

Cohesion is an important part of what makes a text, but notalways an important aspect of literary style.

The most conspicuous feature of linkage is the tendency to relyon inferred linkage, i.e., on the absence of connectors or simplejuxtaposition, rather than on overt signals.

Semantically, linkage may be placed on the following scale ofcohesiveness:

- the most cohesive signals are the connectives (e.g.therefore) as they indicate a fairly explicit relation between thetwo clauses.



- the “general purpose link” is the conjunction and. It is thevaguest of connectives, it merely says that two ideas have apositive connection and leaves the reader to work out what it is.

- The end-point is represented by inferred linkage/juxtaposition especially preferred in the stream-of-consciousness prose. (Leech, 1992: 250)


1. Discuss the excerpt below in terms of realism in fictional conversation.Underline the function in character-drawing of the real-life conversationfeatures preserved by Kingsley Amis in the text:

‘I’m terribly sorry if I’ve made a mistake, but I was under the impression thatMiss Loosmore here had something to do with …’

He turned to Margaret for aid, but before she could speak Welch, of allpeople, had come in loudly with: ‘Poor old Dixon, ma-ha-ha, must have beenconfusing this … this young lady with Sonia Loosmore, a friend of Bertrand’swho let us all down rather badly some time ago. I think Bertrand must havethought you were … twitting him or something, Dixon, ba-ha-ha.’

‘Well, if he’d taken the trouble to be introduced, this wouldn’t havehappened,’ Bertrand said, still flushed. ‘Instead of which, he …’

‘Don’t worry about it, Mr. Dixon,’ the girl cut in. ‘It was only a silly littlemisunderstanding. I can quite see how it happened. My name’s ChristineCallaghan. Altogether different, you see.’

‘Well, I’m … thanks very much for taking it like that. I’m very sorryabout it, really I am.’

(Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim in Leech, 1992: 165-166)

2. Comment on the excerpt below making specific reference to the use ofdialect and/or idiolect as means of indirect characterization:

He examined the fracture and the wound, and concluding from a livid colourextending itself upon the limb, that a mortification would ensue, resolved toamputate the leg immediately. — This was a dreadful sentence to the patient,who recruiting himself with a quid of tobacco, pronounced with a woefulcountenance, "What! is there no remedy, doctor? must I be dock'd? can't yousplice it?" — "Assuredly, doctor Mackshane (said the first mate) withsubmission, and deference, and veneration to your superior abilities, andopportunities, and stations (look you) I do apprehend, and conjecture, andaver, that there is no occasion nor necessity to smite off this poor man's leg."— "God almighty bless you, dear Welchman! (cried Rattlin) may you have fairwind and weather wheresoever you're bound, and come to an anchor in theroad of heaven at last." — Mackshane, very much incensed at his mate'sdiffering in opinion from him so openly, answered, that he was not bound togive an account of his practice to him; and in a peremptory tone, ordered himto apply the tourniquet. — At the sight of which, Jack starting up, cried, "Avast,avast! d——n my heart, if you clap your nippers on me, till I know wherefore!— Mr. Random, won't you lend a hand towards saving of my precious limb?Odd's heart, if lieutenant Bowling was here, he would not suffer Jack Rattlin'sleg to be chopped off like a piece of old junk." — This pathetic address to me,



joined to my inclination to serve my honest friend, and the reasons I had tobelieve there was no danger in delaying the amputation, induced me todeclare myself of the first mate's opinion, and affirm that the preternaturalcolour of the skin, was owing to an inflammation occasioned by a contusion,and common in all such cases, without any indication of an approachinggangrene.

(Tobias George Smollett, Roderick Random, sine anno: 167-167)

3. Consider the excerpt below and discuss the extent to which the use ofimaginary speech functions as a revealing indicator of character:

The baronet’s disposition seemed to be cast in the true English mould. Hewas sour, silent and contemptuous; his very looks indicated a consciousnessof superior wealth, and he never opened his mouth, except to make somedry, sarcastic, national reflection … In a word, though his tongue was silenton the subject, his whole demeanour was continually saying, ‘You are all apack of poor, lousy rascals, who have a design upon my purse: ’tis true, Icould buy your whole generation; but, I won’t be bubbled, d’ye see; I amaware of your flattery, and upon my guard against all your knavish pranks;and I come into your company for my own amusement only.’

(Tobias Smollett, Ferdinand Count Fathom, 1990: 140)

4. Discuss the excerpt below in terms of the type of point of view that it isillustrative for. Approach the text from both the traditional (see Leech) and theGenettian perspective.

Edwin went to the doorway of the drawing-room and stood there. Clara, inher Sunday bonnet, was seated at the ancient piano; it had always been shewho had played the accompaniments. Maggie, nursing one of the babies, saton another chair, and leaned towards the page in order to make out thewords. She had half-forgotten the words, and Clara was no longer at ease inthe piano part, and their voices were shaky and unruly, and the piano itselfwas exceedingly bad. A very indifferent performance of indifferent music! Andyet it touched Edwin. He could not deny that by its beauty and by thesentiment of old times it touched him. He moved a little forward in thedoorway. Clara glanced at him, and winked. Now he could see his father.Darius was standing at some distance behind his daughters and hisgrandchild, and staring at them. And the tears rained down from his red eyes,and then his emotion overcame him and he blubbered, just as the duetfinished.

(Arnold Bennett, Clayhanger in Leech, 1992: 175-176)

5. Comment on the excerpt below pointing out the way in which thedescriptive focus functions and the effect that is achieved:

Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, andothers lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down theirbacks and the fore-parts of their legs and feet; But the rest of their bodieswere bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour.They had no tails, and were accustomed to sit as well as to lie down, andoften stood on their hind feet… The females were not so large as the males;they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor anything



more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies. The hair of both sexeswas of several colours, brown, red, black, and yellow.

(Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 1998: 215)

6. Consider the excerpt below and comment on the effect of Richardson’schoice of a ‘first-person’/homodiegetic narrator. Identify the different levels ofthe narrative discourse and discuss the relations between them.

If this ever-active, ever-mischievous monkey of a man, this Lovelace,contrived as you suspect – But here comes my mother again. – Ay, stay alittle longer, my mamma, if you please. I can but be suspected! I can but bechidden for making you wait; and chidden I am sure to be, whether I do ornot, in the way you, my good mamma, are Antony’d into.

Bless me! – how impatient she is! – how she thunders at the door!This moment, madam. How came I to double-lock myself in! What have Idone with the key? Deuce take the key! Dear Madam! You flutter one so!

(Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, 2004: 404)

7. Read the excerpt below and analyse the consequences of the use of a‘third-person’/heterodiegetic narrator in terms of:

- the relation between the different levels of the narrative discourse;- the possibility of identifying in the text what Leech calls the discoursal

point of view related to different value spheres, but also encompassing irony,a certain kind of tone and distance.

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, andrather selfish, is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; heconducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Hadhe married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still morerespectable than he was: - he might even have been made amiable himself;for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mr.Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself; more narrow-minded andselfish.

(Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 2005: 5)

8. Compare the narrative technique in the two following excerpts consideringthe differences in types of narration as well as in the discoursal point of viewcomponents (value picture, irony, tone, distance):

a) Now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, Imust endeavour to be as clear as possible myself.

Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads – blow your noses –cleanse your emunctories – sneeze, my good people! – God bless you –

Now give me all the help you can. […]We live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles—and

so 'tis no matter—else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes every thingso well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless forpastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through herhands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart—orwhatever other creature she models, be it but an asse's foal, you are sure tohave the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternallybungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man.



Whether it is in the choice of the clay—or that it is frequently spoiled inthe baking; by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty (youknow) on one hand—or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the other—or whether this great Artificer is not so attentive to the little Platonicexigences of that part of the species, for whose use she is fabricating this—or that her Ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort of a husband willdo—I know not: we will discourse about it after supper.

It is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the reasoning uponit, are at all to the purpose—but rather against it; since with regard to myuncle Toby's fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better: she hadformed him of the best and kindliest clay—had temper'd it with her own milk,and breathed into it the sweetest spirit—she had made him all gentle,generous, and humane—she had filled his heart with trust and confidence,and disposed every passage which led to it, for the communication of thetenderest offices—she had moreover considered the other causes for whichmatrimony was ordained—

(Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1994: 524; 525)

b) No sooner had Joseph grasped this Cudgel in his Hands, than Lightningdarted from his Eyes; and the heroick Youth, swift of Foot, ran with the utmostspeed to his Friend's assistance. He overtook him just as Rockwood [the dog]had laid hold of the Skirt of his Cassock, which being torn hung to the ground.Reader, we would make a Simile on this Occasion, but for two Reasons: Thefirst is, it would interrupt the Description, which should be rapid in this Part; butthat doth not weigh much, many Precedents occurring for such an Interruption:The second, and much the greater Reason is, that we could find no Simileadequate to our Purpose: For indeed, what Instance could we bring to setbefore our Reader's Eyes at once the Idea of Friendship, Courage, Youth,Beauty, Strength, and Swiftness; all which blazed in the Person of JosephAndrews. Let those therefore that describe Lions and Tigers, and Heroesfiercer than both, raise their Poems or Plays with the Simile of JosephAndrews, who is himself above the reach of any Simile.

(Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, 1973:186)

9. Re-consider the excerpts above and make comments on their rhetoricalpeculiarities (syntax, iconicity, cohesion).

Section 4. Representations of Reality in the Eighteenth-century Novel


SECTION 4. Representations of Reality in theEighteenth-century English Novel. Practical

Applications

Having been provided in the previous three sections of this practicalcourse with the theoretical framework necessary for the analysis innarratological and stylistic terms of the narrative discourse, in this finalsection, the students are required to apply the acquired knowledge to severalexcerpts extracted from some of the most representative novels of theeighteenth century:

4.1. Daniel Defoe, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of theFamous Moll Flanders

Wandering thus about, I knew not whither, I passed by anapothecary's shop in Leadenhall Street, when I saw lie on a stool just beforethe counter a little bundle wrapped in a white cloth; beyond it stood a maid-servant with her back to it, looking towards the top of the shop, where theapothecary's apprentice, as I suppose, was standing upon the counter, withhis back also to the door, and a candle in his hand, looking and reaching upto the upper shelf for something he wanted, so that both were engagedmighty earnestly, and nobody else in the shop.

This was the bait; and the devil, who I said laid the snare, as readilyprompted me as if he had spoke, for I remember, and shall never forget it,'twas like a voice spoken to me over my shoulder, 'Take the bundle; be quick;do it this moment.' It was no sooner said but I stepped into the shop, andwith my back to the wench, as if I had stood up for a cart that was going by, Iput my hand behind me and took the bundle, and went off with it, the maid orthe fellow not perceiving me, or any one else.

It is impossible to express the horror of my soul al the while I did it.When I went away I had no heart to run, or scarce to mend my pace. Icrossed the street indeed, and went down the first turning I came to, and Ithink it was a street that went through into Fenchurch Street. From thence Icrossed and turned through so many ways an turnings, that I could never tellwhich way it was, not where I went; for I felt not the ground I stepped on, andthe farther I was out of danger, the faster I went, till, tired and out of breath, Iwas forced to sit down on a little bench at a door, and then I began torecover, and found I was got into Thames Street, near Billingsgate. I restedme a little and went on; my blood was all in a fire; my heart beat as if I was ina sudden fright. In short, I was under such a surprise that I still knew notwither I was going, or what to do.

After I had tired myself thus with walking a long way about, and soeagerly, I began to consider and make home to my lodging, where I cameabout nine o'clock at night.

When the bundle was made up for, or on what occasion laid where Ifound it, I knew not, but when I came to open it I found there was a suit ofchildbed-linen in it, very good and almost new, the lace very fine; there was asilver porringer of a pint, a small silver mug and six spoons, with some other



linen, a good smock, and three silk handkerchiefs, and in the mug, wrappedup in a paper, 18s. 6d. in money. (1994: 209-211)

4.2. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

This Academy is not an entire single Building, but a Continuation ofseveral Houses on both Sides of a Street; which growing waste, waspurchased and applyed to that Use.

I was received very kindly by the Warden, and went for many Days tothe Academy. Every Room hath in it one or more Projectors; and I believe Icould not be in fewer than five Hundred Rooms.

The first Man I saw was of a meager Aspect, with sooty Hands andFace, his Hair and Beard long, ragged and singed in several Places. HisCloathes, Shirt, and Skin were all of the same Colour. He had been EightYears upon a Project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers, whichwere to be put into Vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the Air inraw inclement Summers. He told me he did not doubt in Eight Years more heshould be able to supply the Governors Gardens with Sun-shine at areasonable Rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and intreated meto give him something as an Encouragement to Ingenuity, especially sincethis had been a very dear Season for Cucumbers. I made him a smallPresent, for my Lord had furnished me with Money on Purpose, because heknew their Practice of begging from all who go to see them.

I went into another Chamber, but was ready to hasten back, beingalmost overcome with a horrible Stink. My Conductor pressed me forward,conjuring me in a Whisper to give no Offence, which would be highlyresented; and therefore I durst not so much as stop my Nose. The Projectorof this Cell was the most ancient Student of the Academy. His Face andBeard were of a pale Yellow; his Hands and Clothes daubed over with Filth.When I was presented to him, he gave me a close Embrace (a Compliment Icould well have excused.) His Employment from his first coming into theAcademy, was an Operation to reduce human Excrement to its original Food,by separating the several Parts, removing the Tincture which it receives fromthe Gall, making the Odour exhale, and scumming off the Saliva. He had aweekly Allowance from the Society, of a Vessel filled with human Ordureabout the Bigness of a Bristol Barrel.

I saw another at work to calcine Ice into Gunpowder; who likewiseshewed me a Treatise he had written concerning the Malleability of Fire,which he intended to publish.

There was a most ingenious Architect who had contrived a newMethod for building Houses, by beginning at the Roof, and workingdownwards to the Foundation; which he justified to me by the like Practice ofthose two prudent Insects, the Bee and the Spider.

There was a Man born blind, who had several Apprentices in his ownCondition: Their Employment was to mix Colours for Painters, which theirMaster taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed myMisfortune to find them at that Time not very perfect in their Lessons; and theProfessor himself happened to be generally mistaken: This Artist is muchencouraged and esteemed by the whole Fraternity.

In another Apartment I was highly pleased with a Projector, who hadfound a Device of plowing the Ground with Hogs, to save the Charges ofPlows, Cattle, and Labour. The Method in this: In an Acre of Ground you bury



at six Inches Distance, and eight deep, a Quantity of Acorns, Dates,Chestnuts, and other Maste or Vegetables whereof these Animals arefondest; then you drive six Hundred or more of them into the Field, where in afew Days they will root up the whole Ground in search of their Food, andmake it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their Dung. It is true,upon Experiment they found the Charge and Trouble very great, and theyhad little or no Crop. However, it is not doubted that this Invention may becapable of great Improvement.

I went into another Room, where the Walls and Ceiling were all hunground with Cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the Artist to go in and out.At my Entrance he called aloud to me not to disturb his Webs. He lamentedthe fatal Mistake the World had been so long in of using Silk-Worms, whilewe had such plenty of domestick Insects, who infinitely excelled the Former,because they understood how to weave as well as spin. And he proposedfarther, that by employing Spiders, the Charge of dying Silks should bewholly saved; whereof I was fully convinced when he shewed me a vastNumber of Flies most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his Spiders;assuring us, that the Webs would take a Tincture from them; and as he hadthem of all Hues, he hoped to fit every Body's Fancy, as soon as he couldfind proper Food for the Flies, of certain Gums, Oyls, and other glutinousMatter to give a Strength and Consistence to the Threads.

There was an Astronomer who had undertaken to place a Sun-Dialupon the great Weather-Cock on the Town-House, by adjusting the annualand diurnal Motions of the Earth and Sun, so as to answer and coincide withall accidental Turnings of the Wind.

I was complaining of a small fit of the Cholick; upon which myConductor led me into a Room, where a great Physician resided, who wasfamous for curing that Disease by contrary Operations from the sameInstrument. He had a large Pair of Bellows with a long slender Muzzle ofIvory. This he conveyed eight Inches up the Anus, and drawing in the Wind,he affirmed he could make the Guts as lank as a dried Bladder. But when theDisease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the Muzzle while theBellows were full of Wind, which he discharged into the Body of the Patient,then withdrew the Instrument to replenish it, clapping his Thumb stronglyagainst the Orifice of the Fundament; and this being repeated three or fourTimes, the adventitious Wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along withit (like Water put into a Pump), and the Patient recover. I saw him try bothExperiments upon a Dog, but could not discern any Effect from the former.After the latter, the Animal was ready to burst, and made so violent aDischarge, as was very offensive to me and my Companions. The Dog diedon the Spot, and we left the Doctor endeavouring to recover him by the sameOperation.

I visited many other Apartments, but shall not trouble my Reader withall the Curiosities I observed, being studious of Brevity. (1998: 171-175)

4.3. Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of JosephAndrews and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams

Mr. Joseph Andrews was now in the one and twentieth Year of his Age.He was of the highest Degree of middle Stature. His Limbs were put togetherwith great Elegance and no less Strength. His Legs and Thighs were formed in



the exactest Proportion. His Shoulders were broad and brawny, but yet hisArms hung so easily, that he had all the Symptoms of Strength without theleast clumsiness. His Hair was of a nut-brown Colour, and was displayed inwanton Ringlets down his Back. His Forehead was high, his Eyes dark, and asfull of Sweetness as of Fire. His Nose a little inclined to the Roman. His Teethwhite and even. His Lips full red, and soft. His Beard was only rough on hisChin and upper Lip; but his Cheeks, in which his Blood glowed, wereoverspread with a thick Down. His Countenance had a Tenderness joined witha Sensibility inexpressible. Add to this the most perfect Neatness in his Dress,and an Air, which to those who have not seen many Noblemen, would give anIdea of Nobility.

Such was the Person who now appeared before the Lady. She viewedhim some time in Silence, and twice or thrice before she spake, changed herMind as to the manner in which she should begin. At length, she said to him,"Joseph, I am sorry to hear such Complaints against you; I am told you behaveso rudely to the Maids, that they cannot do their Business in quiet; I meanthose who are not wicked enough to hearken to your Solicitations. As toothers, they may not, perhaps call you rude: for there are wicked Sluts whomake one ashamed of one's own Sex; and are as ready to admit anynauseous Familiarity as Fellows to offer it; nay, there are such in my Family:but they shall not stay in it; that impudent Trollop, who is with Child by you, isdischarged by this time."

As a Person who is struck through the Heart with a Thunderbolt, looksextremely surprised, nay, and perhaps, is so too. —Thus the poor Josephreceived the false Accusation of his Mistress; he blushed and lookedconfounded, which she misinterpreted to be Symptoms of his Guilt, and thuswent on.

"Come hither, Joseph: another Mistress might discard you for theseOffences; But I have a Compassion for your Youth, if I could be certain youwould be no more guilty. And consider, Child, (laying her Hand carelesslyupon his) you are a handsome young Fellow, and might do better; you mightmake your Fortune—." "Madam," said Joseph, "I do assure your Ladyship, Idon't know whether any Maid in the House is Man or Woman—". "Oh fie!Joseph," answer'd the Lady, "don't commit another Crime in denying the Truth.I could pardon the first; but I hate a Lyar." "Madam," cries Joseph, "I hope yourLadyship will not be offended at my asserting my Innocence: and by all that isSacred, I have never offered more than Kissing." "Kissing!" said the Lady, "doyou call that no Crime? Kissing, Joseph, is but a Prologue to a Play. Can Ibelieve a young Fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content withKissing? No, Joseph, there is no Woman who grants that but will grant more,and I am deceived greatly in you, if you would not put her closely to it. Whatwould you think, Joseph, if I admitted you to kiss me?" Joseph reply'd, "Hewould sooner die than have any such Thought." "And yet, Joseph," returnedshe, "Ladies have admitted their Footmen to such Familiarities; and Footmen, Iconfess to you, much less deserving them; Fellows without half your Charms:for such might almost excuse the Crime. Tell me, therefore, Joseph, if I shouldadmit you to such Freedom, what would you think of me?—tell me freely.""Madam," said Joseph, "I should think your Ladyship condescended a greatdeal below yourself." "Pugh!" said she, "that I am to answer to myself: butwould not you insist on more? Would you be contented with a Kiss? Would notyour Inclinations be all on fire rather by such a Favour?" "Madam," saidJoseph, "if they were, I hope I should be able to control them, without suffering



them to get the better of my Virtue." —You have heard, Reader, Poets talk ofthe Statue of Surprize; you have heard likewise, or else you have heard verylittle, how Surprize made one of the Sons of Cræsus speak tho' he was dumb.You have seen the Faces, in the Eighteen-penny Gallery, when through theTrap-Door, to soft or no Musick, Mr. Bridgewater, Mr. William Mills, or someother of ghostly Appearance, hath ascended with a Face all pale with Powder,and a Shirt all bloody with Ribbons; but from none of these, nor from Phidias,or Praxiteles, if they should return to Life—no, not from the inimitable Pencil ofmy Friend Hogarth, could you receive such an Idea of Surprize, as would haveentered in at your Eyes, had they beheld the Lady Booby, when those lastWords issued out from the Lips of Joseph. —"Your Virtue! (said the Ladyrecovering after a Silence of two Minutes) I shall never survive it. Your Virtue!Intolerable Confidence! Have you the Assurance to pretend, that when a Ladydemeans herself to throw aside the Rules of Decency, in order to honour youwith the highest Favour in her Power, your Virtue should resist her Inclination?That when she had conquer'd her own Virtue, she should find an Obstructionin yours?" "Madam," said Joseph "I can't see why her having no Virtue shouldbe a Reason against my having any. Or why, because I am a Man, or becauseI am poor, my Virtue must be subservient to her Pleasures." "I am out ofpatience," cries the Lady: "Did ever Mortal hear of a Man's Virtue! Did ever thegreatest, or the gravest Men pretend to any of this Kind! Will Magistrates whopunish Lewdness, or Parsons, who preach against it, make any scruple ofcommitting it? And can a Boy, a Stripling, have the Confidence to talk of hisVirtue?" "Madam," says Joseph, "that Boy is the Brother of Pamela, and wouldbe ashamed, that the Chastity of his Family, which is preserved in her, shouldbe stained in him. If there are such Men as your Ladyship mentions, I am sorryfor it, and I wish they had an Opportunity of reading over those Letters, whichmy Father hath sent me of my Sister Pamela's, nor do I doubt but such anExample would amend them." You impudent Villain, cries the Lady in a Rage,"Do you insult me with the Follies of my Relation, who hath exposed himself allover the Country upon your Sister's account? a little Vixen, whom I havealways wondered my late Lady John Booby ever kept in her House. Sirrah! getout of my sight, and prepare to set out this Night, for I will order you yourWages immediately, and you shall be stripped and turned away.—" "Madam,"says Joseph, "I am sorry I have offended your Ladyship, I am sure I neverintended it." "Yes, Sirrah," cries she, "you have had the Vanity to misconstruethe little innocent Freedom I took in order to try, whether what I had heard wastrue. O' my Conscience, you have had the Assurance to imagine, I was fond ofyou myself." Joseph was going to speak, when she refused to hear him, andordered him instantly to leave the Room.

He was no sooner gone, than she burst forth into the followingExclamation: "Whither doth this violent Passion hurry us? What Meannessesdo we submit to from its Impulse? Wisely we resist its first and leastApproaches; for it is then only we can assure ourselves the Victory. NoWoman could ever safely say, so far only will I go. Have I not exposed myselfto the Refusal of my Footman? I cannot bear the Reflection." Upon which sheapplied herself to the Bell, and rung it with infinite more Violence than wasnecessary; the faithful Slipslop attending near at hand: To say the truth, shehad conceived a Suspicion at her last Interview with her Mistress; and hadwaited ever since in the Antichamber, having carefully applied her Ears to theKey-Hole during the whole time, that the preceeding Conversation passedbetween Joseph and the Lady. (1973: 18-21)



4.4. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Mr. Western had an estate in this parish; and as his house stood atlittle greater distance from this church than from his own, he very often cameto Divine Service here; and both he and the charming Sophia happened to bepresent at this time.

Sophia was much pleased with the beauty of the girl, whom she pitiedfor her simplicity in having dressed herself in that manner, as she saw theenvy which it had occasioned among her equals. She no sooner came homethan she sent for the gamekeeper, and ordered him to bring his daughter toher; saying she would provide for her in the family, and might possibly placethe girl about her own person, when her own maid, who was now goingaway, had left her.

Poor Seagrim was thunderstruck at this; for he was no stranger to thefault in the shape of his daughter. He answered, in a stammering voice, "Thathe was afraid Molly would be too awkward to wait on her ladyship, as shehad never been at service." "No matter for that," says Sophia; "she will soonimprove. I am pleased with the girl, and am resolved to try her."

Black George now repaired to his wife, on whose prudent counsel hedepended to extricate him out of this dilemma; but when he came thither hefound his house in some confusion. So great envy had this sack occasioned,that when Mr. Allworthy and the other gentry were gone from church, therage, which had hitherto been confined, burst into an uproar; and, havingvented itself at first in opprobrious words, laughs, hisses, and gestures,betook itself at last to certain missile weapons; which, though from theirplastic nature they threatened neither the loss of life or of limb, were howeversufficiently dreadful to a well-dressed lady. Molly had too much spirit to bearthis treatment tamely. Having therefore- but hold, as we are diffident of ourown abilities, let us here invite a superior power to our assistance.

Ye Muses, then, whoever ye are, who love to sing battles, andprincipally thou who whilom didst recount the slaughter in those fields whereHudibras and Trulla fought, if thou wert not starved with thy friend Butler,assist me on this great occasion. All things are not in the power of all.

As a vast herd of cows in a rich farmer's yard, if, while they are milked,they hear their calves at a distance, lamenting the robbery which is thencommitting, roar and bellow; so roared forth the Somersetshire mob anhallaloo, made up of almost as many squalls, screams, and other differentsounds as there were persons, or indeed passions among them: some wereinspired by rage, others alarmed by fear, and others had nothing in theirheads but the love of fun; but chiefly Envy, the sister of Satan, and hisconstant companion, rushed among the crowd, and blew up the fury of thewomen; who no sooner came up to Molly than they pelted her with dirt andrubbish.

Molly, having endeavoured in vain to make a handsome retreat, facedabout; and laying hold of ragged Bess, who advanced in the front of theenemy, she at one blow felled her to the ground. The whole army of theenemy (though near a hundred in number), seeing the fate of their general,gave back many paces, and retired behind a new-dug grave; for thechurchyard was the field of battle, where there was to be a funeral that veryevening. Molly pursued her victory, and catching up a skull which lay on theside of the grave, discharged it with such fury, that having hit a taylor on the



head, the two skulls sent equally forth a hollow sound at their meeting, andthe taylor took presently measure of his length on the ground, where theskulls lay side by side, and it was doubtful which was the more valuable ofthe two. Molly then taking a thigh-bone in her hand, fell in among the flyingranks, and dealing her blows with great liberality on either side, overthrew thecarcass of many a mighty heroe and heroine.

Recount, O Muse, the names of those who fell on this fatal day. First,Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasantbanks of sweetly-winding Stour had nourished, where he first learnt the vocalart, with which, wandering up and down at wakes and fairs, he cheered therural nymphs and swains, when upon the green they interweaved thesprightly dance; while he himself stood fiddling and jumping to his own music.How little now avails his fiddle! He thumps the verdant floor with his carcass.Next, old Echepole, the sowgelder, received a blow in his forehead from ourAmazonian heroine, and immediately fell to the ground. He was a swingingfat fellow, and fell with almost as much noise as a house. His tobacco-boxdropped at the same time from his pocket, which Molly took up as lawfulspoils. Then Kate of the Mill tumbled unfortunately over a tombstone, whichcatching hold of her ungartered stocking inverted the order of nature, andgave her heels the superiority to her head. Betty Pippin, with young Rogerher lover, fell both to the ground; where, oh perverse fate! she salutes theearth, and he the sky. Tom Freckle, the smith's son, was the next victim toher rage. He was an ingenious workman, and made excellent pattens; nay,the very patten with which he was knocked down was his own workmanship.Had he been at that time singing psalms in the church, he would haveavoided a broken head. Miss Crow, the daughter of a farmer; John Giddish,himself a farmer; Nan Slouch, Esther Codling, Will Spray, Tom Bennet; thethree Misses Potter, whose father keeps the sign of the Red Lion; BettyChambermaid, Jack Ostler, and many others of inferior note, lay rollingamong the graves. (1985: 140-142)

4.5. Tobias George Smollett, The Adventures of RoderickRandom

While I and my fellow-prisoner comforted each other in our tribulation,the admiral discovered four sail of ships to leeward, and made signal for ourship and four more to chase: hereupon, every thing was cleared for anengagement, and Mackshane foreseeing he would have occasion for moreassistants than one, obtained Morgan's liberty; while I was left in thisdeplorable posture to the chance of battle. It was almost dark when we cameup with the sternmost chase, which we hailed, and enquired who they were:they gave us to understand they were French men of war, upon which captainOakhum commanded them to send their boat on board of him; but theyrefused, telling him, if he had any business with them, to come on board oftheir ship: he then threatened to pour in a broad-side upon them, which theypromised to return. Both sides were as good as their word, and theengagement began with great fury. The reader may guess how I passed mytime, lying in this helpless situation, amidst the terrors of a sea-fight; expectingevery moment to be cut asunder or dashed in pieces by the enemy's shot! Iendeavoured to compose myself as much as possible, by reflecting that I wasnot a whit more exposed than those who were stationed about me; but when I



beheld them employed without intermission, in annoying the foe, andencouraged by the society and behaviour of one another, I could easilyperceive a wide difference between their condition and mine: however, Iconcealed my agitation as well as I could, till the head of the officer of Marines,who stood near me, being shot off, bounced from the deck athwart my face,leaving me well-night blinded with brains. I could contain myself no longer, butbegan to bellow with all the strength of my lungs: when a drummer comingtowards me, asked if I was wounded? and before I could answer, received agreat shot in his belly which tore out his entrails, and he fell flat on my breast.This accident entirely bereft me of all discretion: I redoubled my cries, whichwere drowned in the noise of the battle; and finding myself disregarded, lost allpatience and became frantic: I vented my rage in oaths and execrations, till myspirits being quite exhausted, I remained quiet and insensible of the load thatoppressed me. The engagement lasted till broad day, when captain Oakhum,finding he was like to gain neither honour nor advantage by the affair,pretended to be undeceived by seeing their colours; and hailing the ship withwhom he had fought all night, protested he believed them Spaniards, and theguns being silenced on each side, ordered the barge to be hoisted out, andwent on board of the French commodore. Our loss amounted to ten killed andeighteen wounded, most part of whom afterwards died. My fellow-mates hadno sooner dispatched their business in the cockpit, than full of friendly concern,they came to visit me. Morgan ascending first, and seeing my face almostcovered with brains and blood, concluded I was no longer a man for this world;and calling to Thomson with great emotion, bid him come up and take his lastfarewell of his comrade and countryman, who was posting to a better place,where there were no Mackshanes nor Oakhums to asperse and torment him."No,” said he, taking me by the hand, “you are going to a country where thereis more respect shown to unfortunate shentlemen, and where you will have thesatisfaction of peholding your adversaries tossing upon pillows of purningprimstone." Thomson alarmed at this apostrophe, made haste to the placewhere I lay, and sitting down by me, with tears in his eyes, enquired into thenature of my calamity. By this time I had recollected myself so far as to be ableto converse rationally with my friends, whom, to their great satisfaction, Iimmediately undeceived with regard to their apprehension of my being mortallywounded. After I had got myself disengaged from the carnage in which Iwallowed, and partaken of a refreshment which my friends brought along withthem, we entered into discourse upon the hardships we sustained, and spokevery freely of the authors of our misery: but our discourse being overheard bythe sentinel who guarded me, he was no sooner relieved, than he reported tothe captain every syllable of our conversation, according to the orders he hadreceived. The effect of this information soon appeared in the arrival of themaster at arms, who replaced Morgan in his former station; and gave thesecond mate a caution to keep a strict guard over his tongue, if he did notchoose to accompany us in our confinement. (169-171)

4.6. Tobias George Smollett, The Adventures of FerdinandCount Fathom

Fathom, whose own principles taught him to be suspicious, and everupon his guard against the treachery of his fellow-creatures, could havedispensed with this instance of her care, in confining her guest to her



chamber, and began to be seized with strange fancies, when he observedthat there was no bolt on the inside of the door, by which he might securehimself from intrusion. In consequence of these suggestions, he proposed totake an accurate survey of every object in the apartment, and, in the courseof his inquiry, had the mortification to find the dead body of a man, still warm,who had been lately stabbed, and concealed beneath several bundles ofstraw.

Such a discovery could not fail to fill the breast of our hero withunspeakable horror; for he concluded that he himself would undergo thesame fate before morning, without the interposition of a miracle in his favour.In the first transports of his dread, he ran to the window, with a view toescape by that outlet, and found his flight effectually obstructed by diversstrong bars of iron. Then his heart began to palpitate, his hair to bristle up,and his knees to totter; his thoughts teemed with presages of death anddestruction; his conscience rose up in judgment against him, and heunderwent a severe paroxysm of dismay and distraction. His spirits wereagitated into a state of fermentation that produced a species of resolutionakin to that which is inspired by brandy or other strong liquors, and, by animpulse that seemed supernatural, he was immediately hurried intomeasures for his own preservation.

What upon a less interesting occasion his imagination durst notpropose, he now executed without scruple or remorse. He undressed thecorpse that lay bleeding among the straw, and, conveying it to the bed in hisarms, deposited it in the attitude of a person who sleeps at his ease; then heextinguished the light, took possession of the place from whence the bodyhad been removed, and, holding a pistol ready cocked in each hand, waitedfor the sequel with that determined purpose which is often the immediateproduction of despair. About midnight he heard the sound of feet ascendingthe ladder; the door was softly opened; he saw the shadow of two menstalking towards the bed, a dark lanthorn being unshrouded, directed theiraim to the supposed sleeper, and he that held it thrust a poniard to his heart;the force of the blow made a compression on the chest, and a sort of groanissued from the windpipe of the defunct; the stroke was repeated, withoutproducing a repetition of the note, so that the assassins concluded the workwas effectually done, and retired for the present with a design to return andrifle the deceased at their leisure.

Never had our hero spent a moment in such agony as he felt during thisoperation; the whole surface of his body was covered with a cold sweat, andhis nerves were relaxed with an universal palsy. In short, he remained in atrance that, in all probability, contributed to his safety; for, had he retained theuse of his senses, he might have been discovered by the transports of his fear.The first use he made of his retrieved recollection, was to perceive that theassassins had left the door open in their retreat; and he would have instantlyavailed himself of this their neglect, by sallying out upon them, at the hazard ofhis life, had he not been restrained by a conversation he overheard in the roombelow, importing, that the ruffians were going to set out upon anotherexpedition, in hopes of finding more prey. They accordingly departed, afterhaving laid strong injunctions upon the old woman to keep the door fast lockedduring their absence; and Ferdinand took his resolution without farther delay.So soon as, by his conjecture, the robbers were at a sufficient distance fromthe house, he rose from his lurking-place, moved softly towards the bed, and,rummaging the pockets of the deceased, found a purse well stored with



ducats, of which, together with a silver watch and a diamond ring, heimmediately possessed himself without scruple; then, descending with greatcare and circumspection into the lower apartment, stood before the oldbeldame, before she had the least intimation of his approach.

Accustomed as she was to the trade of blood, the hoary hag did notbehold this apparition without giving signs of infinite terror and astonishment,believing it was no other than the spirit of her second guest, who had beenmurdered; she fell upon her knees and began to recommend herself to theprotection of the saints, crossing herself with as much devotion as if she hadbeen entitled to the particular care and attention of Heaven. Nor did heranxiety abate, when she was undeceived in this her supposition, andunderstood it was no phantom, but the real substance of the stranger, who,without staying to upbraid her with the enormity of her crimes, commandedher, on pain of immediate death, to produce his horse, to which beingconducted, he set her upon the saddle without delay, and, mounting behind,invested her with the management of the reins, swearing, in a mostperemptory tone, that the only chance she had for her life, was in directinghim safely to the next town; and that, so soon as she should give him theleast cause to doubt her fidelity in the performance of that task, he would onthe instant act the part of her executioner.

This declaration had its effect upon the withered Hecate, who, withmany supplications for mercy and forgiveness, promised to guide him in safetyto a certain village at the distance of two leagues, where he might lodge insecurity, and be provided with a fresh horse, or other convenience, forpursuing his intended route. On these conditions he told her she mightdeserve his clemency; and they accordingly took their departure together, shebeing placed astride upon the saddle, holding the bridle in one hand and aswitch in the other; and our adventurer sitting on the crupper, superintendingher conduct, and keeping the muzzle of a pistol close at her ear. In thisequipage they travelled across part of the same wood in which his guide hadforsaken him; and it is not to be supposed that he passed his time in the mostagreeable reverie, while he found himself involved in the labyrinth of thoseshades, which he considered as the haunts of robbery and assassination.

Common fear was a comfortable sensation to what he felt in thisexcursion. The first steps he had taken for his preservation were the effectsof mere instinct, while his faculties were extinguished or suppressed bydespair; but now, as his reflection began to recur, he was haunted by themost intolerable apprehensions. Every whisper of the wind through thethickets was swelled into the hoarse menaces of murder, the shaking of theboughs was construed into the brandishing of poniards, and every shadow ofa tree became the apparition of a ruffian eager for blood. In short, at each ofthese occurrences he felt what was infinitely more tormenting than the stab ofa real dagger; and at every fresh fillip of his fear, he acted as aremembrancer to his conductress, in a new volley of imprecations, importing,that her life was absolutely connected with his opinion of his own safety.

Human nature could not longer subsist under such complicated terror.At last he found himself clear of the forest, and was blessed with the distantview of an inhabited place. He then began to exercise his thoughts upon a newsubject. He debated with himself, whether he should make a parade of hisintrepidity and public spirit, by disclosing his achievement, and surrenderinghis guide to the penalty of the law; or leave the old hag and her accomplices tothe remorse of their own consciences, and proceed quietly on his journey to



Paris in undisturbed possession of the prize he had already obtained. This laststep he determined to take, upon recollecting, that, in the course of hisinformation, the story of the murdered stranger would infallibly attract theattention of justice, and, in that case, the effects he had borrowed from thedefunct must be refunded for the benefit of those who had a right to thesuccession. This was an argument which our adventurer could not resist; heforesaw that he should be stripped of his acquisition, which he looked upon asthe fair fruits of his valour and sagacity; and, moreover, be detained as anevidence against the robbers, to the manifest detriment of his affairs. Perhapstoo he had motives of conscience, that dissuaded him from bearing witnessagainst a set of people whose principles did not much differ from his own.(1990-133-136)

4.7. Tobias George Smollett, The Expedition of HumphryClinker

To Dr LEWIS.DOCTOR,

The pills are good for nothing — I might as well swallow snowballs tocool my reins — I have told you over and over how hard I am to move; and atthis time of day, I ought to know something of my own constitution. Why willyou be so positive? Prithee send me another prescription — I am as lame andas much tortured in all my limbs as if I was broke upon the wheel: indeed, I amequally distressed in mind and body — As if I had not plagues enough of myown, those children of my sister are left me for a perpetual source of vexation— what business have people to get children to plague their neighbours? Aridiculous incident that happened yesterday to my niece Liddy, has disorderedme in such a manner, that I expect to be laid up with another fit of the gout —perhaps, I may explain myself in my next. I shall set out tomorrow morning forthe Hot Well at Bristol, where I am afraid I shall stay longer than I could wish.On the receipt of this send Williams thither with my saddle-horse and the demipique. Tell Barns to thresh out the two old ricks, and send the corn to market,and sell it off to the poor at a shilling a bushel under market price. — I havereceived a sniveling letter from Griffin, offering to make a public submissionand pay costs. I want none of his submissions, neither will I pocket any of hismoney. The fellow is a bad neighbour, and I desire, to have nothing to do withhim: but as he is purse-proud, he shall pay for his insolence: let him give fivepounds to the poor of the parish, and I will withdraw my action; and in themean time you may tell Prig to stop proceedings. — Let Morgan's widow havethe Alderney cow, and forty shillings to clothe her children: but don't say asyllable of the matter to any living soul — I'll make her pay when she is able. Idesire you will lock up all my drawers, and keep the keys till meeting; and besure you take the iron chest with my papers into your own custody — Forgiveall, this trouble from,Dear Lewis,Your affectionateM. BRAMBLEGLOUCESTER, April 2.

To Mrs GWYLLIM, house-keeper at Brambleton-hall.MRS GWILLIM,



When this cums to hand, be sure to pack up in the trunk male that standsin my closet; to be sent me in the Bristol waggon without loss of time, thefollowing articles, viz. my rose collard neglejay with green robins, my yellowdamask, and my black velvets with the short hoop; my bloo quilted petticot, mygreen mantel, my laced apron, my French commode, Macklin head and lappetsand the litel box with my jowls. Williams may bring over my bum-daffee, and theviol with the easings of Dr Hill's dockwater and Chowder's lacksitif. The poorcreature has been terribly stuprated ever since we left huom. Pray takeparticular care of the house while the family is absent. Let there be a fireconstantly kept in my brother's chamber and mine. The maids, having nothing todo, may be sat a spinning. I desire you'll clap a pad-luck on the wind-seller, andlet none of the men have excess to the strong bear — don't forget to have thegate shit every evening be dark — The gardnir and the hind may lie below in thelandry, to partake the house, with the blunderbuss and the great dog; and hopeyou'll have a watchful eye over the maids. I know that hussy Mary Jones, lovesto be rumping with the men. Let me know Alderney's calf be sould yet, and whathe fought — if the ould goose be sitting; and if the cobler has cut Dicky, and howpore anemil bore the operation. No more at present, but rests,Yours,TABITHA BRAMBLEGLOSTAR, April 2.

TO Mrs MARY JONES, at Brambleton-hall.DEAR MOLLY,

Heaving this importunity, I send, my love to you and Saul, being in goodhealth, and hoping to hear the same from you; and that you and Saul will takemy poor kitten to bed with you this cold weather. We have been all in, a sadtaking here at Glostar — Miss Liddy had like to have run away with a player-man, and young master and he would adone themselves a mischief; but the,squire applied to the mare, and they were, bound over. — Mistress bid me notspeak a word of the matter to any Christian soul — no more I shall; for, weservints should see all and say nothing — But what was worse than all this,Chowder has, had the, misfortune to be worried by a butcher's dog, and camehome in a terrible pickle — Mistress was taken with the asterisks, but theysoon went off. The doctor was sent for to Chowder, and he subscribed arepository which did him great service — thank God he's now in a fair way todo well — pray take care of my box and the pillyber and put them under yourown bed; for, I do suppose madam, Gwyllim will be a prying into my secrets,now my back is turned. John Thomas is in good health, but sulky. The squiregave away an ould coat to a poor man; and John says as, how 'tis robbing himof his perquisites. — I told him, by his agreement he was to receive no vails;but he says as how there's a difference betwixt vails and perquisites; and sothere is for sartain. We are all going to the Hot Well, where I shall drink yourhealth in a glass of water, being,Dear Molly,Your humble servant to command,W. JENKINSGLOSTAR, April 2nd.

To Sir WATKIN PHILLIPS, Bart. of Jesus college, Oxon.DEAR PHILLIPS,



As I have nothing more at heart than to convince you I am incapable offorgetting, or neglecting the friendship I made at college, now begin thatcorrespondence by letters, which you and I agreed, at parting, to cultivate. Ibegin it sooner than I intended, that you may have it in your power to refuteany idle reports which may be circulated to my prejudice at Oxford, touching afoolish quarrel, in which I have been involved on account of my sister, who hadbeen some time settled here in a boarding-school. When I came hither with myuncle and aunt (who are our guardians) to fetch her away, I found her a finetall girl, of seventeen, with an agreeable person; but remarkably simple, andquite ignorant of the world. This disposition, and want of experience, hadexposed her to the addresses of a person — I know not what to call him, whohad seen her at a play; and, with a confidence and dexterity peculiar tohimself, found means to be recommended to her acquaintance. It was by thegreatest accident I intercepted one of his letters; as it was my duty to stifle thiscorrespondence in its birth, I made it my business to find him out, and tell himvery freely my sentiments of the matter. The spark did not like the stile I used,and behaved with abundance of mettle. Though his rank in life (which, by thebye, I am ashamed to declare) did not entitle him to much deference; yet ashis behaviour was remarkably spirited, I admitted him to the privilege of agentleman, and something might have happened, had not we been prevented.— In short, the business took air, I know not how, and made abundance ofnoise — recourse was had to justice — I was obliged to give my word andhonour, &c. and to-morrow morning we set out for Bristol Wells, where I expectto hear from you by the return of the post. — I have got into a family oforiginals, whom I may one day attempt to describe for your amusement. Myaunt, Mrs Tabitha Bramble, is a maiden of forty-five, exceedingly starched,vain, and ridiculous. — My uncle is an odd kind of humorist, always on the fret,and so unpleasant in his manner, that rather than be obliged to keep himcompany, I'd resign all claim to the inheritance of his estate. Indeed his beingtortured by the gout may have soured his temper, and, perhaps, I may like himbetter on further acquaintance; certain it is, all his servants and neighbours inthe country are fond of him, even to a degree of enthusiasm, the reason ofwhich I cannot as yet comprehend. Remember me to Griffy Price, Gwyn,Mansel, Basset, and all the rest of my old Cambrian companions. — Salutethe bedmaker in my name — give my service to the cook, and pray take careof poor Ponto, for the sake of his old master, who is, and ever will be,Dear Phillips,Your affectionate friend,and humble servant,JER. MELFORDGLOUCESTER, April 2. (1995: 1-4)

4.8. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa: or, the History of a YoungLady

Miss Clarissa Harlowe to Miss HoweFebruary 25.

I have had the expected conference with my aunt.I have been obliged to hear the man's [Mr. Solmes’s] proposals from

her; and all their motives for espousing him as they do. I am even loth tomention, how equally unjust it is for him to make such offers, or for those I



am bound to reverence to accept of them. I hate him more than before. Onegreat estate is already obtained at the expense of the relations to it, tho'distant relations; my brother's, I mean, by his godmother: And this has giventhe hope, however chimerical that hope, of procuring others; and that myown, at least, may revert to the family: And yet, in my opinion, the world is butone great family: originally it was so: What then is this narrow selfishness thatreigns in us, but relationship remembered against relationship forgot?

But here, upon my absolute refusal of him upon any terms, have I hada signification made me, that wounds me to the heart. How can I tell it you?Yet I must. It is, my dear, that I must not, for a month to come, or till licenseobtained, correspond with any -body out of the house.

My brother, upon my aunt's report (made, however, as I am informed,in the gentlest manner, and even giving remote hopes, which she had nocommission from me to give), brought me, in authoritative terms, theprohibition.

Not to Miss Howe? said I.No, not to Miss Howe, Madam, tauntingly: For have you not

acknowledged, that Lovelace is a favourite there?See, my dear Miss Howe!And do you think, brother, this is the way?Do you look to that: But your letters will be stopped, I can tell you. And

away he flung.My sister came to me soon after. Sister Clary, you are going on in a

fine way, I understand. But as there are people who are supposed to hardenyou against your duty, I am to tell you, that it will be taken well, if you avoidvisits or visitings for a week or two, till further order.

Can this be from those who have authority—Ask them; ask them, child, with a twirl of her finger. I have delivered

my message. Your papa will be obeyed. He is willing to hope you to be allobedience; and would prevent all incitements to refractoriness.

I know my duty, said I, and hope I shall not find impossible conditionsannexed to it.

A pert young creature, vain and conceited, she called me. I was theonly judge, in my own wise-opinion, of what was right and fit. She, for herpart, had long seen through my specious ways: And now I should showeverybody what I was at bottom.

Dear Bella, said I! hands and eyes lifted up, why all this? Dear, dearBella, why—

None of your dear, dear Bella's to me. I tell you, I see thro' yourwitchcrafts. That was her strange word: And away she flung; adding, as shewent,— And so will everybody else very quickly, I dare say.

Bless me, said I to myself, what a sister have I! How have I deserved this?Then I again regretted my grandfather's too distinguishing goodness to me.

Feb. 25. In the evening.What my brother and sister have said against me, I cannot tell; but I

am in heavy disgrace with my papa.I was sent for down to tea. I went with a very cheerful aspect; but had

occasion soon to change it.Such a solemnity in every-body's countenance! My mamma's eyes

were fixed upon the tea-cups; and when she looked up, it was heavily, as ifher eyelids had weights upon them; and then not to me. My papa sat half-



aside in his elbow-chair, that his head might be turned from me; his handsfolded, and waving, as it were, up and down; his fingers, poor deargentleman! in motion, as if angry to the very ends of them. My sister satswelling. My brother looked at me with scorn, having measured me, as I maysay, with his eyes, as I entered, from head to foot. My aunt was there, andlooked upon me, as if with kindness restrained, bending coldly to mycompliment to her, as she sat; and then cast an eye first on my brother, thenon my sister, as if to give the reason (so I am willing to construe it) of herunusual stiffness. —Bless me, my dear! that they should choose to intimidaterather than invite a mind, till now, not thought either unpersuadable orungenerous!—

I took my seat. Shall I make tea, Madam, to my mamma? I alwaysused, you know, my dear, to make tea.

No! a very short sentence, in one very short word was the expressiveanswer: And she was pleased to take the canister in her own hand.

My sister's Betty attending, my brother bid her go; he would fill thewater.

My heart was up at my mouth. I did not know what to do with myself.What is to follow? thought I

Just after the second dish, out stepped my mamma. — A word withyou, sister Hervey! taking her in her hand. Presently my sister dropped away.Then my brother. So I was left alone with my papa.

He looked so very sternly, that my heart failed me, as twice or thrice Iwould have addressed myself to him: Nothing but solemn silence on allhands having passed before.

At last, I asked, If it were his pleasure, that I should pour him outanother dish?

He answered me with the same angry monosyllable which I hadreceived from my mamma before; and then arose, and walked about theroom. I arose too, with intent to throw myself at his feet; but was too muchover-awed by his sternness, even to make such an expression of my duty tohim, as my heart overflowed with.

At last, as he supported himself, because of his gout, on the back of achair, I took a little more courage; and approaching him, besought him toacquaint me, in what I had offended him?

He turned from me, and, in a strong voice, Clarissa Harlowe, said he,know, that I will be obeyed.

God forbid, Sir, that you should not! I have never yet opposed yourwill—

Nor I your whimsies, Clarissa Harlowe, interrupted he. Don't let me runthe fate of all who show indulgence to your sex; to be the more contradictedfor mine to you.

My papa, you know, my dear, has not (any more than my brother) akind opinion of our sex; altho' there is not a more condescending wife in theworld than my mamma.

I was going to make protestations of duty. —No protestations, girl! Nowords. I will not be prated to! I will be obeyed! I have no child. I will have nochild, but an obedient one.

Sir, you never had reason, I hope—Tell me not what I never had, but what I have, and what I shall have.Good Sir, be pleased to hear me. My brother and my sister, I fear—



Your brother and sister shall not be spoken against, girl! They have ajust concern for the honour of my family.

And I hope, Sir,—Hope nothing. Tell me not of hopes, but of facts. I ask nothing of you

but what is in your power to comply with, and what it is your duty to complywith.

Then, Sir, I will comply with it. But yet I hope from your goodness,—No expostulations! No buts, girl! No qualifyings! I will be obeyed, I tell

you; and cheerfully too!—or you are no child of mine!I wept.Let me beseech you, my dear and ever honoured papa (and I dropt

down on my knees) that I may have only your's and my mamma's will, andnot my brother's, to obey. —I was going on; but he was pleased to withdraw,leaving me on the floor; saying, that he would not hear me thus by subtletyand cunning aiming to distinguish away my duty, repeating, that he would beobeyed.

My heart is too full; so full, that it may endanger my duty, were I tounburden it to you on this occasion: So I will lay down my pen. But can— Yet,positively, I will lay down my pen! — (2004: 63-65)

4.9. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of TristramShandy, Gentleman

Volume V, Chapter VII (1997: 297-299)--My young master in London is dead? said Obadiah.----A green sattin night-gown of my mother's, which had been twice

scoured, was the first idea which Obadiah's exclamation brought intoSusannah's head.--Well might Locke write a chapter upon the imperfectionsof words.-- Then, quoth Susannah, we must all go into mourning.--But note asecond time: the word mourning, notwithstanding Susannah made use of itherself-- failed also of doing its office; it excited not one single idea, tingedeither with grey or black,--all was green.--The green sattin night-gown hungthere still.

--O! 'twill be the death of my poor mistress, cried Susannah.--Mymother's whole wardrobe followed.--What a procession! her red damask,--herorange tawny,--her white and yellow lutestrings,--her brown taffata,--herbone- laced caps, her bed-gowns, and comfortable under-petticoats.--Not arag was left behind.--'No,--she will never look up again,' said Susannah.

We had a fat, foolish scullion--my father, I think, kept her for hersimplicity;--she had been all autumn struggling with a dropsy.--He is dead,said Obadiah,--he is certainly dead!--So am not I, said the foolish scullion.

--Here is sad news, Trim, cried Susannah, wiping her eyes as Trimstepp'd into the kitchen,--master Bobby is dead and buried--the funeral wasan interpolation of Susannah's--we shall have all to go into mourning, saidSusannah.

I hope not, said Trim.--You hope not! cried Susannah earnestly.—Themourning ran not in Trim's head, whatever it did in Susannah's.--I hope-- saidTrim, explaining himself, I hope in God the news is not true. I heard the letterread with my own ears, answered Obadiah; and we shall have a terriblepiece of work of it in stubbing the ox-moor.--Oh! he's dead, said Susannah.--As sure, said the scullion, as I'm alive.



I lament for him from my heart and my soul, said Trim, fetching a sigh.-- Poor creature!--poor boy!--poor gentleman!

--He was alive last Whitsontide! said the coachman.--Whitsontide!alas! cried Trim, extending his right arm, and falling instantly into the sameattitude in which he read the sermon,--what is Whitsontide, Jonathan (for thatwas the coachman's name), or Shrovetide, or any tide or time past, to this?Are we not here now, continued the corporal (striking the end of his stickperpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an idea of health and stability)--and are we not--(dropping his hat upon the ground) gone! in a moment!--'Twas infinitely striking! Susannah burst into a flood of tears.--We are notstocks and stones.--Jonathan, Obadiah, the cook-maid, all melted.--Thefoolish fat scullion herself, who was scouring a fish-kettle upon her knees,was rous'd with it.--The whole kitchen crowded about the corporal.

Now, as I perceive plainly, that the preservation of our constitution inchurch and state,--and possibly the preservation of the whole world—or whatis the same thing, the distribution and balance of its property and power, mayin time to come depend greatly upon the right understanding of this stroke ofthe corporal's eloquence--I do demand your attention—your worships andreverences, for any ten pages together, take them where you will in any otherpart of the work, shall sleep for it at your ease.

I said, 'we were not stocks and stones'--'tis very well. I should haveadded, nor are we angels, I wish we were,--but men clothed with bodies, andgoverned by our imaginations;--and what a junketing piece of work of it thereis, betwixt these and our seven senses, especially some of them, for my ownpart, I own it, I am ashamed to confess. Let it suffice to affirm, that of all thesenses, the eye (for I absolutely deny the touch, though most of your Barbati,I know, are for it) has the quickest commerce with the soul,--gives a smarterstroke, and leaves something more inexpressible upon the fancy, than wordscan either convey--or sometimes get rid of.

--I've gone a little about--no matter, 'tis for health--let us only carry itback in our mind to the mortality of Trim's hat--'Are we not here now,-- andgone in a moment?'--There was nothing in the sentence--'twas one of yourself-evident truths we have the advantage of hearing every day; and if Trimhad not trusted more to his hat than his head--he made nothing at all of it.

--'Are we not here now;' continued the corporal, 'and are we not'--(dropping his hat plumb upon the ground--and pausing, before hepronounced the word)--'gone! in a moment?' The descent of the hat was asif a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it.--Nothing couldhave expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it was the type and fore-runner, like it,--his hand seemed to vanish from under it,--it fell dead,-- thecorporal's eye fixed upon it, as upon a corpse,--and Susannah burst into aflood of tears.

Now--Ten thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand (for matterand motion are infinite) are the ways by which a hat may be dropped uponthe ground, without any effect.--Had he flung it, or thrown it, or cast it, orskimmed it, or squirted it, or let it slip or fall in any possible direction underheaven,--or in the best direction that could be given to it,--had he dropped itlike a goose--like a puppy--like an ass--or in doing it, or even after he haddone, had he looked like a fool--like a ninny--like a nincompoop--it had fail'd,and the effect upon the heart had been lost.



Ye who govern this mighty world and its mighty concerns with theengines of eloquence,--who heat it, and cool it, and melt it, and mollify it,--and then harden it again to your purpose--

Ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass, and,having done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye think meet.

Ye, lastly, who drive--and why not, Ye also who are driven, like turkeysto market with a stick and a red clout--meditate--meditate, I beseech you,upon Trim's hat.

Volume V, Chapter VIII (1997: 299-300)Stay--I have a small account to settle with the reader before Trim can go onwith his harangue.--It shall be done in two minutes.

Amongst many other book-debts, all of which I shall discharge in duetime,--I own myself a debtor to the world for two items,--a chapter uponchamber- maids and button-holes, which, in the former part of my work, Ipromised and fully intended to pay off this year: but some of your worshipsand reverences telling me, that the two subjects, especially so connectedtogether, might endanger the morals of the world,--I pray the chapter uponchamber-maids and button-holes may be forgiven me,--and that they willaccept of the last chapter in lieu of it; which is nothing, an't please yourreverences, but a chapter of chamber-maids, green gowns, and old hats.

Trim took his hat off the ground,--put it upon his head,--and then wenton with his oration upon death, in manner and form following.

Volume V, Chapter IX (1997: 300)--To us, Jonathan, who know not what want or care is--who live here in

the service of two of the best of masters--(bating in my own case his majestyKing William the Third, whom I had the honour to serve both in Ireland andFlanders)--I own it, that from Whitsontide to within three weeks of Christmas,--'tis not long--'tis like nothing;--but to those, Jonathan, who know what deathis, and what havock and destruction he can make, before a man can wellwheel about--'tis like a whole age.--O Jonathan! 'twould make a good-naturedman's heart bleed, to consider, continued the corporal (standingperpendicularly), how low many a brave and upright fellow has been laidsince that time!--And trust me, Susy, added the corporal, turning toSusannah, whose eyes were swimming in water,--before that time comesround again,--many a bright eye will be dim.--Susannah placed it to the rightside of the page--she wept--but she court'sied too.--Are we not, continuedTrim, looking still at Susannah--are we not like a flower of the field--a tear ofpride stole in betwixt every two tears of humiliation--else no tongue couldhave described Susannah's affliction--is not all flesh grass?--Tis clay,--'tisdirt.--They all looked directly at the scullion,-- the scullion had just beenscouring a fish-kettle.--It was not fair.--

--What is the finest face that ever man looked at!--I could hear Trimtalk so for ever, cried Susannah,--what is it! (Susannah laid her hand uponTrim's shoulder)--but corruption?--Susannah took it off.

--Now I love you for this--and 'tis this delicious mixture within youwhich makes you dear creatures what you are--and he who hates you for it--all I can say of the matter is--That he has either a pumpkin for his head--or apippin for his heart,--and whenever he is dissected 'twill be found so.



4.10. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey ThroughFrance and Italy by Mr. Yorick

The Pulse. Paris. (2001: 49-51)Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road

of it! like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight: ’tis yewho open this door and let the stranger in.

- Pray, Madame, said I, have the goodness to tell me which way I mustturn to go to the Opéra Comique? - Most willingly, Monsieur, said she, layingaside her work. -

I had given a cast with my eye into half a dozen shops, as I came along,in search of a face not likely to be disordered by such an interruption: till at last,this, hitting my fancy, I had walked in.

She was working a pair of ruffles, as she sat in a low chair, on the far sideof the shop, facing the door.

- Tres volontiers, most willingly, said she, laying her work down upon achair next her, and rising up from the low chair she was sitting in, with socheerful a movement, and so cheerful a look, that had I been laying out fiftylouis d’ors with her, I should have said - “This woman is grateful.”

You must turn, Monsieur, said she, going with me to the door of theshop, and pointing the way down the street I was to take, - you must turn firstto your left hand, - mais prenez garde - there are two turns; and be so good asto take the second - then go down a little way and you’ll see a church: and,when you are past it, give yourself the trouble to turn directly to the right, andthat will lead you to the foot of the Pont Neuf, which you must cross - and thereany one will do himself the pleasure to show you. -

She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with the samegoodnatur’d patience the third time as the first; - and if tones and mannershave a meaning, which certainly they have, unless to hearts which shut themout, - she seemed really interested that I should not lose myself.

I will not suppose it was the woman’s beauty, notwithstanding she wasthe handsomest grisette, I think, I ever saw, which had much to do with thesense I had of her courtesy; only I remember, when I told her how much I wasobliged to her, that I looked very full in her eyes, - and that I repeated mythanks as often as she had done her instructions.

I had not got ten paces from the door, before I found I had forgot everytittle of what she had said; - so looking back, and seeing her still standing inthe door of the shop, as if to look whether I went right or not, - I returned backto ask her, whether the first turn was to my right or left, - for that I hadabsolutely forgot. - Is it possible! said she, half laughing. ’Tis very possible,replied I, when a man is thinking more of a woman than of her good advice.

As this was the real truth - she took it, as every woman takes a matterof right, with a slight curtsey.

- Attendez! said she, laying her hand upon my arm to detain me, whilstshe called a lad out of the back shop to get ready a parcel of gloves. I am justgoing to send him, said she, with a packet into that quarter, and if you will havethe complaisance to step in, it will be ready in a moment, and he shall attendyou to the place. - So I walk’d in with her to the far side of the shop: and takingup the ruffle in my hand which she laid upon the chair, as if I had a mind to sit,she sat down herself in her low chair, and I instantly sat myself down besideher.



- He will be ready, Monsieur, said she, in a moment. - And in thatmoment, replied I, most willingly would I say something very civil to you for allthese courtesies. Any one may do a casual act of good nature, but acontinuation of them shows it is a part of the temperature; and certainly, addedI, if it is the same blood which comes from the heart which descends to theextremes (touching her wrist) I am sure you must have one of the best pulsesof any woman in the world. - Feel it, said she, holding out her arm. So layingdown my hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied the twoforefingers of my other to the artery. -

- Would to heaven! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst passed by, andbeheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my lack-a-day-sical manner,counting the throbs of it, one by one, with as much true devotion as if I hadbeen watching the critical ebb or flow of her fever. - How wouldst thou havelaugh’d and moralized upon my new profession! - and thou shouldst havelaugh’d and moralized on. - Trust me, my dear Eugenius, I should have said,“There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.” -But a grisette’s! thou wouldst have said, - and in an open shop! Yorick -

- So much the better: for when my views are direct, Eugenius, I care not ifall the world saw me feel it.

The Husband. Paris. (2001: 51-52)I had counted twenty pulsations, and was going on fast towards the

fortieth, when her husband, coming unexpected from a back parlour into theshop, put me a little out of my reckoning. - ’Twas nobody but her husband, shesaid; - so I began a fresh score. - Monsieur is so good, quoth she, as hepass’d by us, as to give himself the trouble of feeling my pulse. - The husbandtook off his hat, and making me a bow, said, I did him too much honour - andhaving said that, he put on his hat and walk’d out.

Good God! said I to myself, as he went out, - and can this man be thehusband of this woman!

Let it not torment the few who know what must have been the groundsof this exclamation, if I explain it to those who do not.

In London a shopkeeper and a shopkeeper’s wife seem to be one boneand one flesh: in the several endowments of mind and body, sometimes theone, sometimes the other has it, so as, in general, to be upon a par, and totallywith each other as nearly as man and wife need to do.

In Paris, there are scarce two orders of beings more different: for thelegislative and executive powers of the shop not resting in the husband, heseldom comes there: - in some dark and dismal room behind, he sitscommerce-less, in his thrum nightcap, the same rough son of Nature thatNature left him.

The genius of a people, where nothing but the monarchy is salique,having ceded this department, with sundry others, totally to the women, - by acontinual higgling with customers of all ranks and sizes from morning to night,like so many rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable collisionsthey have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and not only becomeround and smooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant: -Monsieur le Mari is little better than the stone under your foot.

- Surely, - surely, man! it is not good for thee to sit alone: - thou wastmade for social intercourse and gentle greetings; and this improvement of ournatures from it I appeal to as my evidence.



- And how does it beat, Monsieur? said she. - With all the benignity,said I, looking quietly in her eyes, that I expected. - She was going to saysomething civil in return - but the lad came into the shop with the gloves. - Ápropos, said I, I want a couple of pairs myself.

Bibliography


Bibliography

Books Cited

Novels Austen, Jane (2005) Sense and Sensibility. Emma. Northanger Abbey,

London: Chancellor Press. Defoe, Daniel (1994) Robinson Crusoe, London: Penguin Books. Defoe, Daniel (1994) The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll

Flanders, London: Penguin Books. Fielding, Henry (1973) Joseph Andrews preceded by Shamela, London: J.

M. Dent &Sons Ltd. Fielding, Henry (1985) The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, London:

Penguin Books. Richardson, Samuel (2004) Clarissa or the History of a Young Lady,

London: Penguin Books. Smollett, Tobias (1990) The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom,

London: Penguin Books. Smollett, Tobias (sine anno) The Adventures of Roderick Random, London:

J. M. Dent &Sons Ltd. Smollett, Tobias George (1995) The Expedition of Humphry Clinker,

Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited. Sterne, Laurence (1997) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,

Gentleman, London: Penguin Books. Sterne, Laurence (2001) A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by

Mr. Yorick, London: Penguin Books. Swift, Jonathan (1998) Gulliver’s Travels, Oxford and New York: Oxford

University Press. Walpole, Horace (2001) The Castle of Otranto, London: Penguin Books.

Literary Theory and Criticism Bal, Mieke (1982) “Mimesis and Genre Theory in Aristotle’s Poetics” in

Harshaw (Hrushovski), Benjamin (ed.), Poetics Today, Volume 3, no.1, ThePorter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv: Schenkman PublishingCompany Inc., pp. 172-173.

Booth, Wayne (1983) The Rhetoric of Fiction, Second edition, Chicago andLondon: University of Chicago Press.

Genette, Gérard (1980) Narrative Discourse, New York: Cornell UniversityPress.

Leech, Geoffrey and Michael Short (1992) Style in Fiction, London, NewYork: Longman.

McKeon, Michael (1989) The Origins of the English Novel 1600-1740,Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Mitchell, W.J.T. (1995) “Representation” in Frank Lentricchia and ThomasMcLaughlin, Critical Terms for Literary Study, Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Stewart, Philip (1969) Imitation and Illusion in the French Memoir-Novel,1700-1750, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Bibliography


Williams, Jeffrey J. (1998) Theory and the Novel. Narrative Reflexivity inthe British Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zgorzelski, Andrzej (1984) “On Differentiating Fantastic Fiction: SomeSupragenological Distinctions in Literature” in Benjamin Harshaw(Hrushovski) (ed.), Poetics Today, Volume 5, no. 2, The Porter Institute forPoetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv: Israel Science Publishers Ltd., pp. 302-306.

Books Consulted

Abrams, M. H. (1999) A Glossary of Literary Terms, Boston: Heinle & Heinle.Thomson Learning.

Auerbach, Erich (1953) Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in WesternLiterature, Princeton University Press.

Avădanei, Ştefan (2002) Introduction to Poetics. Vol. II, Iaşi: InstitutulEuropean.

Bal Mieke (2002) Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative,Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.

Barthes, Roland, Leo Bersani, Philippe Hamon, Michael Riffaterre and IanWatt (1982) Littérature et réalité, Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Brânzeu, Pia (1995) The Protean Novelists. The British Novel from Defoeto Scott, Timişoara: Universitatea din Timişoara.

Ducrot, Oswald and Tzvetan Todorov (1972) Dictionnaire Encyclopédiquedes Sciences du Language, Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Ford, Boris (ed.) (1991) The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol.4, London: Penguin Books.

Greimas, A. -J. (1983) Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method,Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Herman, Jan (1989) Le mensonge romanesque: Paramètres pour l’étudedu roman épistolaire en France, Leuven: Leuven University Press;Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Konigsberg, Ira (1985) Narrative Technique in the English Novel. Defoe toAusten, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.

Lintvelt, Jaap (1981) Essai de typologie narrative. Le “point de vue.”Théorie et analyse, Paris: Librairie José Corti.

Lodge, David (1992) The Art of Fiction, London: Penguin Books. Mander, Jenny (1999) Circles of Learning: Narratology and the Eighteenth-

Century French Novel, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Onega, Susana and José Ángel García Landa (eds.) (1996) Narratology.

An Introduction, London and New York: Longman. Probyn, Clive (1994) English Fiction of the Eighteenth Century 1700-1789,

London, New York: Longman. Ray, William (1990) Story and History. Narrative Authority and Social

Identity in the Eighteenth-Century French and English Novel,Massachusetts and Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Todorov, Tzvetan (1975) Poetica. Gramatica Decameronului, Bucureşti:Univers.

Toolan, Michael (1992) Narrative. A Critical Linguistic Introduction, London,New York: Routledge.

Watt, Ian (1974) The Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson andFielding, London: Chatto & Windus.

Date post:	14-Dec-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	lidia
View:	55 times
Download:	2 times

CP de literatura engleza - Gabriela Colipca.pdf

Documents