How to see through language: Perspective in fiction

213

Poetics II (1982) 213-235 North-Holland Pubhshmg Company

HOW

TO SEE THROUGH

ROGER

FOWLER

LANGUAGE:

PERSPECTIVE

IN FICTION

*

This paper is an exploration of some aspects of one of the most obscure parts of narratology, namely point of view theory. I shall base my study on one of the two most important literary-theoretical accounts of the problem, Boris Uspensky’s A Poems 01 Composrrron Uspensky’s treatment of point of view has two major advantages, for my purposes. First, Uspensky realises that point

[I].

of view should be split into several dimensions or ‘planes’ (ideological. spatiotemporal, psychological and phraseological in his terms) and thus ,ays the fovndation for a relatively rich description of the complexities of compositional structure m narrative fiction. Second, Uspensky’s compositional poetics is tooted in the tradition of linguistic poetics established by his Russian predecessors Bakhtin (1968, 1973) and VoloSinov (1973) so that he recognises the irr iortance of hnguistic structure in the constitution of point of view on his vario! levels. But he does not go so far as to acknowledge that different types of point of view are in fact different types of discursive structure, linguistically identifiable. I shall try to specify the linguistic characteristics that determine some aspects of point of view as distinguished by Uspensky, paying special attention to the categories of modaliry, de&s and trunsrrwiry. Because these aspects of language are defined within a technical linguistic theory that is a lot

-

more formal than Uspensky’s poetic theory, their application to the problem of point of view necessarily tends to systematise and realign the components of Uspensky’s theory. Ultimately, the aim would be to reformulate the whole account of point of view as a linguistic (text-grammatical) theoty. For the moment, I will begin the task of identifying the linguistic structures which are associated with each of Uspensky’s major components of point of view. 1 will proceed partly by textual analysis, and partly by reference to materials which are already familiar in existing discussions of point of view. In order to ensure reasonable attention to Uspensky’s ‘spatial’ level, I have also chosen a strongly

* Author’s address: Roger Fowler. University 01 East Anglta. School of En&h Studies, Norwich NR4 7TJ. UK.

and Amencm

I

[I] Uspensky (1973). Tne other IS Genette (1972) In a paper of limtted length. the mobt can do IS clarify one theorist by applying a more exphclt lingutsttc model to hts categories. An attempt to synthesise Uspensky’s and Genette’s categwes would be mterestmg.

0304-422X/82/0000-0900/$02.75

0 1982 North-Holland

visual

novel by a writer

who was also a painter:

Mervyn

Peake’s

Torus Grouch.

A Poarcs I$ Cbnqmsrrrofi is an exposition of four levels or planes of point of view. their interrelationships, and their manifestations in different art forms. ‘Point of view’ itself. in literature. is said to be analogous to ‘viewing position’ in the visual arts. What is viewed. and by whom? Uspensky stresses that point of view is only relevant to the representational arts; there is for Uspensky once a student of Hjelmslev’s - a clear distinction between form and content. 50 that ‘what is viewed’ is the represented content. The four planes are largely, but not consistently, planes within the content. (in passing it should be noted that Uspensky’s four planes do not cover everything that mtght be considered ‘content’ m a theory of fiction. In particular. Uspensky pays little attention to plot (narrative macrostructure) or to thematic cantent.) As for the question ‘who vtews?‘. the answer given to this is quite simply: ‘the reader’: but what kind of reader this is - ‘ideal’, ‘implied’. ‘real’ - receives little discussion. [Jspensky’s casual and freduent use of this term ‘the reader’ suggests to me that he means a perJon who reads the text. rather than (as ‘reader’ should be in this context) an abstract property of the compositional (i.e. linguistic) structure of the text This naive treatment of the concept of reader is part of a pronounced, unexamined, humanism and psychologism which characterises Uspensky’s discussion. ‘Reader’. ‘author’ and ‘character’ are basic, largely undefined, terms in Uspensky’s argument: ‘subject’. used as Bakhtin uses it in talking about Dostoevsky, also occurs. These concepts are discussed as if they referred to real human individuals: the reader takes up a viewing position - say. in relation to described visual materials - which may be close to that of the author or of a character: the author (and thus the reader) may observe a character from outstde. or have privileged access to the character’s consciousness. These highly person-centred assumptions are something of an obstruction to my develop ment of the theory, for two reasons. First, the assumption of real individuals with real thoughts and sense-receptors bypasses the whole problem of how such jrcrrons are constructed - by readers with humanistic expectations productively consuming texts with certain compositional properties. Second, the Individualistic bias obscures the fact that ‘subjects’ are socially constituted and not autorlomous entities [2]. Returning to Uspensky. I would prefer to recast the whole discussion in terms of sociolinguistic. or social semiotic [3] analysis of the language OS the texts seen as compositionally structured IO provide instructions to a historically specified ideal reader who will realise the fictional constructs of the texts in terms of the ideologies that are intersubjectlt,ely

[2] For a conventional social-psychologtcalaccoun,of the swaal COII,~UE~IOII of the mdl\,dudl and hns/her world. see Berger and Luckmann (1971). For mire radical treatmentsof the illwon of the ‘SUbJeCt’. see Althuar (1977), and Coward bnd Elhs (1977). [3] I take the term ‘soaal semvx~c from the wnlmga of the hn&wst Halhday (1978). whoae theones I sn?:i employ later on.

.vailable.

The creaking

language

r,t the previous

sentence

indicates

the radical

conceptual reorientation that w.uld be necessary to effect this transformation of theoretical framework. Uspensky’s approach is traditional bourgeois humanistic point of view theory, but more sophisticated than, say. that of Jamesian poetics as transmitted by Booth (1961). To make use of his more advanced insights, and make them accessible to my readers, I adopt his humanistic assumptions, for this paper, j,,st hinting here and there at what social semiotic and materialist reformulations might be possible and desirable. Uspensky distinguishes four senses in which ‘point of view’ may be understood acd defined: Several approachesare possible: we ma,’ consjder pant of view a\ an Ideologwd and evalua~vr posam: we may constder it as a spatA and temporal pos~lmn of the one who produce\the descrtplmn of die events (ICII 1s. the narrator. whose posmon 1s flxed along spatial and wmpordl coordmares);*.‘emay study tt wllh respectto perceptual[elsewhere.‘psychological’]chxaatert\tlc\, or we may study II m a purely lmgulsllc sense(as. for example.I( relates to such phenomenaas quasi-direct discourse); and so lot 111.(1973: 6).

Though he is somewhat equivocal on this point, Uspensky seems to regard these senses of ‘point of view’ as products of the critic’s descriptron rather than as objective properties of the texts: they are ‘planes of analysis’ (1973: 6). So, additional levels are possible (‘and so forth’) and some adJustments m the hierarchical ordering of the levels may be necessary: let me say at once that these four planes are not all of the same status. By ‘rdeology’ or ‘eualuarron’ Uspensky refers to ‘a general system of viewing the world conceptually’ or ‘the system of ideas that shape the work (1973: 8). ‘world view’ (1973: 15). Two issues arise oo this level: first. who, within the compositional structure of the work, is :ile vehicle for the Ideology? Is 11 the author speaking through the narrative voice, or is it a character or characters? And is there a single dominatmg world-view, or a plurality of ideological positions? On these questions, Uspensky follows Bakhtin very closely. The least interesting cases are those in which the text projects a smgle normative ideology according :o which all the scenes, events and characters are Judged: such cases are rare. and among the major novels potential candidates turn out to be complex or ironical - the perpetually commenttng author-figure ‘Fielding’ in Tom Jones, the central cc.rsciousness Strether in The Ambussadors. Plural ideological structure (Bakh.in’s ‘polyphony’) is more interesting: and cases where manifold world-views each have their own SubJective integrtty. challenging and reinterpreting that of the author (Bakhtin’s ‘dialogic’) are the most satisfying of all. Uspensky briefly reviews the various possibilittes withm this framework. The second fundamental issue in ideological analysis concerns the content or character of the ideology/ies mediated by the text. Understandably, Uspensky acknowledges that this, of all the aspects of point of view, ‘is least accessible to formal study’ (1973: 13). The interpretative and thematic

statements

!hat are so central

IO the literary

criticism

of fiction

are generally

attributions of and responses to the systems of values encoded in texts: but how to extract and validate these by formal analysis? Uspensky supplies the basis for an answer: ‘the world view of a character (or of the author himself) may he defined through stylistic analysis of his speech’ (1973: 15). But Uspensky offers little such analysis (nor does Bakhtin). What would be necessary would be a more systematic and inclusive version of the type of stylistic analysis practised by Spitzer (1948). in which some recurrent linguistic construction is noted as probably significant and then asstgned a putative sigmficance according to Spit er’s judgement about the world-view of the wrttrr and its relationship to pattcrns of thought prevqiling in his ttme. Spitzer’s way of proceeding, his ‘philological circle’. is very subjective, but a syslematisalion of his procedure IS certainly possible. Spitzer seizes on any lmgulstic construction which he intuits to be significant, from

I

cuusativ’e conjunctions 10 peculiarities of etymological formation: would not disagree with the principle implicit in this procedure. uamely that rrrry part of language can carry ideological significance. But linguistic theory indicates that there are some speciftc aspects of language which are particularly involved in Ideology .md evaluation; thus the linguistic critic investigating the ideolo&l plane of point of vtew can control his analysis more systematically by scanning those parts of texts that he expects to carry evaluation. Porn1 of vtrw on the ideological plane may be manifested in two fa distinct ways. one direct and one less so. Both ways of establishing ideohperspectrve are clearly identifiable in specific areas of linguistic structure. In the first case, a narrator or a character may dire&y incircate h;s or her judgemenls and beliefs. by the use of a variety of ~rodol structures. Modality IS the grammar of explicit comment, the means by which people express their degree of commitment to the truth of the propositions they utter, -md their views on the desirability or otherwise of the states of affairs referred to. Respectively. ‘Srr Arthur cerrabt/y lost his fortune at the gaming table’ and ‘His gambling was drsastrous for the family’. I have itahcised :he modal words: they came from a fairly specialised section of the vocabulary. and are easy to spot. The forms of modal expression include:

1

M&u/ atrxrlranes: may, might. must. sill. shall, should, needs to, ought to, and a few others, These words signal caution or confidence. to various degrees: something might happen, something will happen, must happen. Notice that the strongly positive modals such as ‘must’ have the additional meaning of necessity or even obligation, so that a speaker using such a word to indicti .e his judgement of certainty or truth may simultantou-ly express approval of or a demand for the things that are being spoken of. Modal adverbs or sentence adoerbs: certainly, probably, surely, perhaps, etc. There are also adtectival versions in such constructions’as ‘It is certain that

adyctmes and aduerhs: lucky. luckily, fortunate. regrettably. and many others. Verbs of knowledge, predmion. evaluatron: seem. believe. guess. foresee. approve, dislike. etc. Generic sentences (Fowler 1977a, b): these are generalised propositions claiming universal truth and usually cast in a syntax reminiscent of proverbs or scientific laws: ‘For loan oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry’ (Polonius); ‘At sixteen, the mind that has the strongest affinity for fact cannot escape illusicn and self-flattery . ..’ (George Eliot, The Md/ on rhe Floss). Often generics are blatantly ironic, as the opening sentence of Pride and Preydrce. JYhere ironv is not intended. the writer may vary her syntax somewhat away from the proverbial from, rendering the generic less obtrusive. George Eliot often does this: for instance, from the same chapter of The MN on the Hess, a dark. chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain - on? of those mornings when even happy people take refuge m their hopes’. From sentences like this. the reader cumulatively builds up a picture of the stock of ‘common sense’ (I.e. ideology) on which George Eliot depends in presentmg and evaluatmg the world of her characters.

Eouluarrve

‘It was

There is a perhaps even more interesting sense in which language indicates ideology or. in fiction, the world-views of author or characters. The modal devices just L!!ustrated make explicit (though sometimes ironic) announ~~emenu of beliefs; other parts of the language system may be s~~~prorncrrrc of world-v iew. and this gives substance to the traditronal stylistic claim that the way propositions are phrased ma; indicate a speaker’s or writer’s attitude towards what he is talking a.bou’ This is in fact Spitzer’s assumption. It has been most fully explored in the writings of the linguist M.A.K. Halliday both in an exemplary literary analysis (Halliday 1971) and in a series of theoretical linguistic papers which have been conveniently collected in two recent anthologies (Kress 1976: Halliday 1978a). Halliday’s model has also been developed and illustrated further by Fowler. Hodge, K.ress and Trew [4]. Halliday argues that the !structural form of a language IS shaped not. as in Chomsky, by universal biological factors, but by the functions which it serves in a particular society. What Halliday calls the rdeurronul or e.rperrenrrul function is the coding and storage of the theories or ideologies by which a society manages its relationship with the world. Under social determination.

[4] See Kress and Hedge (1979). and Fowler et al (1979). For .S ~enrrdl s1awment on the

appl,cauon of thm mode of analysts to hlerary and nc~n.hteraryI~XIS. see Fouler (1980): for thr appt,eauon to frcuon. see Fowler (1977a): for an m,yawxs analyst\ of a poem folloumg rhu method. see Kress (1978): also Fowler (1979a). mterprefmg Bakhttn’s .md VoloWmv’a nmon of “d,alog,c” structure ,n socml semmt~cterms.

the

I

that a culture and its members possess and use encode and classify the dc minant systems of ideas that are central to the ideological practice of the cull ure: to crte a fragment of a current (1980) British political lexicon, ~rronetar~.r~t~. free c c~llecrrt~ h~~rgurnrtr~, redundutrc:r. /we ettterprrse, rtlcermve, productrvry. Brevity of the term indicates the importance of tile concept and the codi,rg efliciency of 11s sign: drsc, ulhrm. spm. rruck. RIP mnp. mke. geur, srngk etc. in the Jargot of popular music. Lack of a turni. with resort to circumlc cution. indicates that a person does not have the concept as fur ty established IS doer his society: there are numerous literary examp!es wit defamiliari.:ing or belrttling effects: BenJy’s curlrng f/over spuces and flower free (Fauhcner. The Sou~rd md rhe Furr ): Jenny Bunn’s rke re~rrur~u of rhe huge pmk fish. btt,k Muck iron fet1w.c 1c~r11 curhcues, son of meuf frrrrer. c rrr!, won /ewes (Amis. Tuk? a Girl II! Lok’s &re hone rhr,rgs, rlns ru’rg id u whrre hotle (II the em. There lt’ere hooks 1~ the hone.. (Gelding. The 1nherlror.s) [S]. Lexical analysis focussing on recurrent and/or absent words or sets of words is commonplace in lrtcrary criticrsm and I need make no further comment on it except to !ay that Halhday’s (1978b) theory of rekwukurron. as developed in Fowler et al. (1979). provides a systematic approach to the question. The major advance in Halliday’s theory of language and world-v ew (or ‘language as social semiotic’ as he calls it) is to show that syntax and set tantics, as well as lexis. embody cogmtive preferences. implicit theories of the qay the world IS organised. this crucial argument in the ariefest I can only introduce discussed elsewhere. The heart of the terms. but it has been extensively proposal is in what Halliday calls (rather eccentrically) the rrunsitivrty structure also want to suggest that syntactic rrur~sforrnutions can 8:xpress of clauses:

1

e 1~~ ):

!

different ideologies. The transitivity structure of a clause is the way it analyses the event or xrtuatmn it describes into certain kinds of participants and processes. The entities referred to by the nouns perform different roles such as Agent, ObJect. Experiencer. Location. etc.; verbs and adjectives may be Actions. States. Metltat Processes. etc. These categories form the basis for classifying clauses into different types. for instance Agent-Action-Object (Joht~ opened the door). ObJect-Process (The door opened ). Experiencer-Mental Process (John wus trrwous) and so on. The ideological significance of transitivity is that a preponderance of some particular type of clause st.ucture in a writer’s or a [5] My three example\ have all been dnscussed by other hrgusl~c E~IIICS; for more detad see ~‘luywn.~+r (1976). Fowler (1977a). and Halhday (1971) (,VI r,aulkner. Anus and Gelding respecll\ely)

character’s discourse may indicate a peculiar way of seeing the world. This is exactly tialliday’s argument in his analysis of Goldmg’s The Iuherrws: Neanderthal Man !-ok is presented in a language which has few animate sub)ects of verbs. few objects of action verbs - in etfect. few basic .\gent-Action-Object clauses like John opened the dooand Halliday interprets this as symptomatic of an attenuated notion of causatton in Lok, a failure to recognise man’s power to act upon and change his environment. A similar suggestion may be made about the mind-style ot Benjy as given in the famous opening sentences of The

,-

Sound and I/W Fury, in which action verbs which normally require objects are employed without objects: ‘I could see them hitting. ..and they were hitting...and he hit and the other hit’. Another. telated. type of deviant world-view attrib.ttable to transittvity structures is that found tn gothtc novels in which h*marr subjects play little part as Agents whils action verbs. and adjectives attributing mental states normally associated with humans. are regularly predicated of inanimate objects; e.g.. from Me/mu//t rlre Wu&erer:

Although it is easiest to illustrate the ideoiogical tmphcattons of transtttvtt? from the estranged discourse of a deliberately defective fictional world-view. palpable ungrammaticalness of this kind is not necessary to this process. Any transitivity patterns that fall into some recurrent regularity wtll create rl prevailing ideology. This is m fact the way in whtch norms are constructed and maintained. ‘Natural narrative’ with its world of ccntrolled cause-and-effect and sequential events is presumably constructed of a language full of action clauses, a style which may be foregrounded (Hemingway, Chandler) or tmperceptible (news reporting). The connection between transitivity patterns and different theories or ideologies in the media has been demonstrated by Trew in Fowler et al. (1979: chs. 6 and 7) in close analytic studies of the language of newspapers. Transform,ttions may be regarded as alternative syntactic renderings of the same propositional materials. Either an active or a passive structure may be used to report the same event, and which contruction is employed will depend on the speaker’s perspective on the event and his assumptions about his interlocutor’s interest in it: in the choice between active and passive. the crucial factor is which part of the information is known tc both of the parttes communicating, and which is new. Other transform:ttions may serve to thematise parts of the message which are particularly important m the value-system of the discourse, or to delete participants which, for one reason or another. need to be suppressed or backgrounded. The contributions to ideological structure have been demonstrated elsewhere;

of transformations the present treat-

rnent of such an important matter has to he regredably 1X-22 and 109-I 13; Fowler et al. 1979: 39-42).

brief (Fowler

19773:

A final word on language structure and point of view on the ideological plane. The patterns in novels. newspapers. etc. to which I have referred are not indtvtdual. not unique to a parttcular text under dislussion. but conoerrrronal: e.g. there is a conventional literary style for children, idiots. primitives: one for plain unadorned narration of actions, and so on. Such conventions preexist ;ndivtdual works, their source hetng in the ideological resources of the culture at large; therefore, in the interpretation of specific narratives, point of view on the ideological plane should be related to the belief system and social practices of the producers and consumers of the texts. The discourse of a narrative only has meamng in the context of the other discourses. and the prevai’lng ideologies. of its society 161. The most penetrating and original part of Uspensky’s argument is perhaps 111s discussion of point of vtew on what he calls the ‘ps_vchological’ or the ‘pmepplud’ plane. Neither of these terms (in the English translation\ is very s‘ttisfactory: a good part of what might be considered ‘psychological comes under the ‘ideological’ plane - belief-systems. mind-styles - and ‘perceptual’ conmres up ‘spatial’. Point of view on the plane in question amounts to the Ill~lJOr dtstinction between rr~remul and e.~ren~a/ perspective. i.e. whether the author has access to the consciousness of the character(s). or alternatively views the character(s) from outside. Put in those simplistic terms. the distinctton seems commonplace; but Uspensky’s originality is to connect internal vs. external in literature with homomorphic structures in the other respresentational arts (e.g. inverse and linear perspective in painting). I must confess that I am not parttcularly interested in the possible homomorphy of various arts in this respect, but in the potential for a sophisticated set of discriminations among perspectives in narrative texts which is implicit in Uspensky’s basic distinction. Careful reading of A Poems of Composrrron shows that Uspensky allows for at least two subdivisions within each of his two categories, and we can derive from this basic framework a range of complex and shifting usages. Before I list the four basic categories which I derive from Uspensky, let me stress that probably no text exemplifies any single type purely and consistently: such consistency would be an inconceivable technical tour-de-force in a medium as ccmplicated as language. and would imply an uninterestingly stable certainty of knowledge (it would be monologic in Bakhtin’s derogatory sense). Here is Uspensky’s introduction of the distinction between internal and external perspective: When an author consmcts

his narratmn. he usually h?s two optmns open to him: he may structure

16) This social-ldcologvzalapproach to htrraq dwourse 1sImphat m Vobicov. and in Bakhtm’s work on carmral. II not I” Uspensky. For further dr&m~entalong these Imes. see Fowler (1979b)

the events and characters purludar

mdlv!dual’s

it\ posrable

sever.d. or he may

word>.

(1973:

the au:hor

speakmp.

humdn

he descnbcd

irom

ather

deimed

cIe.~rh

onlooker. uho

may

this

prt~~ccmg

hlr wn

of \lea

“W

pcncw.w

to

the ~nter”.d accrwhle

oi ~IW

are known alternate

10 him.

between

wewpoml

the ewnls

of some

as “bJectWely

of one c”nsc~““s”ess

or

combmabons of these two

Dnfferent

ths:m or may

pr,ze~~ 1”

.I”

expenenw

I> ~ntcrnal

in more explicitly

“i

or unspeclfled.

hehawr

twro~.dl\

pi w

SubJecllVe

or he may describe

combmc

psychologistic

behwor ma) be described m IWObasically

the pomt

Stxwd,

I\ pcrmltted

rcw.ded

the debberarely

use the dunnPer of the percept,“ns

them

I” various

RI)

A little later. he rephrases GeneralI\

through

~““~cI”us”~!~~.

he mily

use the facts as they

techmques are porvble: *a>\.

of the narr”twe

(or mdwduals’)

In other

an “utslde

and

uho

be descrnhed

the co”sc~“usne:s (thoughts.

e\ter”.d onto

the e-.lrrnsl

to the person

whose

posmon

behawor

I”

First.

the work

onI>

irom

pomt of VICWof an omnwxnt

the

oi Ihal

(ubo

person

sensorj can

In this kmd

perceptions. onI\

mamfestatlons

who 1s bang

the

ways.

describes

feebnga.

“brrner

observer

terms:

d~slmcl

described..

of ~“mcone

about

11 may may

IS btslble

ue fmd

uhlch such

1~

to an

observer

oi descrlptlon

emouons)

speciila~e

(1973:

nhlch

are not procewx

else‘s behalor)

This

83)

1 h.nc quoted AI length so rhat the variations in Uspensky’b phrasing ulll ?;ucges~ whit dwnmmationr can be made lxithin his Tao basic categories ol ‘mtern,ll’ and ‘e\terndl’. .i. The mw n.\rr,1113n b?

elemental case of ~~rernul perspective would be first person .I p.wlcipsrmg charxter (Icher:uh/ung). The subJecU\it) of \\tnch l’spensL\ spe.As \\ould be Indicated b! a~ least three types of hnguwc imthr:

the character with a specific social group. either constructed genre of narrative or kmnvn from discourse outside the fiction: peasants, merchants. teachers. etc. In this way the discourse prevathng ideologies of known groups.

within the adolescents evokes th

An obvious example of a ftrst-prrson parttcipating narrator whose language displays the characteristics of internal perspective listed above is Nick Carraway in The Grmt Gorsh~. The radical case of internal A is stream of consciousness or interior monologue (U!r.sse.r, To the Lqhrhouse) in which patterns of lexical classification. transitivity and syntactic transformation are deliberately constructed. orten in a defamiliarising ftshion. to suggest the character’s personal ideology or mind-style. B. fnren~ul perspective may also he given in a third person narration which does not attempt the radical psychologtcal mimesis of A’s stream of consciousness (though there are bound to be traces of mimetic discourse. so at this point A and B do shade into one another). The most straightforward kind of third person mternat narratton is what Uspensky. following traditional usage, calls ‘ommacient’. (This is a misleading term implying that there are some ‘facts’ preexisting the fiction which the novelist is ‘prtvdeged’ to know, ‘penetrating’ the outer sh;ll of “re characters.) Deixis is transferred to a narrating voice independent of the character. Modalities of evaluation are not prominent (contrast esrentol D below). But the narrator comments on or des ribes the mental processes. feehngs and pe-ceptions of the characters, so !ha, the chief linguistic marker of this variant oi internal narration is the presence of what Uspensky calls rerha senrrewir. words of thought. feeling and perception (he reJk( red ON.she was sud. she heurd. he hstened. etc.):

Transitivity patterns and systems of lexical classification may or may not indicate the world-view of the character; to the extent that they do, they are framed by the narrator’s ideology, since the primary evaluative processes must be attributed to the narrator’s agency. In the example Just quoted, the verbs clzoosmp and scrurrnrsrn~ analyse rather than dramatise the character Steerpike’s mentality: they are author’s words for internal processes, part of an extensive lexical system by which Steerpike is characterised as a deliberate, ,alculating entrepreneur. The point is that the words themselves are not manifestly part of a typical discourse attributed to Steerpike with a claim of psychological

mimesis as we would expect in internal narrat on type A. The ‘pure’ (rare!) form of internal type B, then, is a discourse which adop$c the author’s perspective ideologically and relates the character’s internal states by report rather than linguistic dramatisation. My separation of A and B as distinct, linguistically distmct, subcategorles of internal perspective allows a new, jnd, I believe, illuminating definitic.1 of free rndirecr drscourse [S]: FID is found in a stretch of text in which A and B interact, or, to utilise the notion of framing discourse introduced in the preceding paragraph, discourse in which B includes A. FID is internal perspertive in which language indicative of the character’s deixis (e.g. present tense) and ideology (subjective lexical register or marked sociolect. distinctive transitivity patt :rns) is transformed into third person and interwcven with language indicative of narrative deixis (past tense) and narrative/authorial ideology (e.g. writerly vocabulary, action- rather than state-clauses). 1 do not exclude on principle the possibility of FID being formed from the framing of A within C or A within D (see below for C and D), but the interweaving of the adjacent categories A and B seems very appropriate to the subtle transitions between author’s and character’s language that we find in typical FID ( Muns/re/dPork, Eoehne). the authorial, external, discourse of C and D would be very distant from A so the transitions would be quite abrupt. Uspensky clearly distinguishes two types of external perspective. as hinted in his formulation ‘an outside observer whose position in the work may be either clearly defined or unspecified’ (1973: 83): I shall label these positlons D and C respectively. The definitions are amphfied in 1973: 84 and are valuable as a basis for reinterpreting in linguistic terms his types of observer as types of discourse. person’s behavior.. may be dependence on the describing subject.. [TJhe observer’s location is spatially and temporally indoterminate, and his description is impersonal or, we might say. “tranr;ersonal”: for example. it may take the form of a court recording in which the ObJectivity of the account and the lack of involvement of the author are deliberately emphasized, 2nd in which only phrases like “he did.” “he said,” an-

‘he

nounced” - rather than such phrases as “he thought,” “he felt.” “he was ashamed” - are used” (1Jspensky 1973: 84). Thih sounds like a clescription of the most neutral, impersonal. type of third-person narration, the type we associate with epic among the older literatures and, in the modern period, with the ideal impersonal realism posited by Flaubert; Hemingwsy is the most familiar modern example. It must be [SI There (1978)

conceded at once that this category has an accidental historical current prominence, and that its ideal purity is technically unachievable. No text can he wlthot*t deixis or modality, and no text can fail to indicate something of the vstems of values current in a culture and in the aulhor’s conscioumess . an avoidance of first and second person pronouns and of modal forms buggesticg any exphclt Judgement or manifested mental process or experience of characters or narmtor: of course. none of the oerhu senrrendr which characterlse type B. The backgrounding IS an avoidance of consistencies. of any recurrent linguistic structuring which might fall into a foregrounded pattern suggestive of a character’s or narrator’s mind-stvle. To tell the trulh. what is avolded is likely to be those styles which are conventionally associated \\ith subjectivity (Benjy-style. Lok-style) while the avoidance is prone to lead IO some o:! er. non-subjective but conventionally value-leden. foregrounded style: Uspe;rsky’s examples ‘he did,’ etc. suggest that he has in mind a preference for clauses of action. typical narrative clauses with agenls. narrstlve predicates and I strong presumption of cause and effect and of temporal bequence. This of course is in itself an ideology.

:

D. We come finally to type D. the second type of exlernal narration. By contrast with C. the persona of the narrator is highl.ghted. perhaps by first and second person pronoun usages and certamly by explicit e.Gstemrc and evaluahve modal operators. By these means the impression is cre?ted of a speaker who controls the telling of the story and who has definite views on the world at large (announced in generic sentences, perhaps) and on the actions and chcracters m the narrative (evaluative adjectives). These views need be ‘definite’ only in ;he sense of being manifestly discernible: as Uspensky points out (1973: 84) they may be either ‘s!able’ or ‘!,hifting’. Inconsistency or tentativeness of viewpoint are common with overt, personalised narra;ors - e.g. Fielding and George Eliot respectiveiy.

If this deictically and modally dramatised author or narrator makes claim to knowledge of characters’ inner states. then we have one variant of type 3 narration - dramatised L \d omniscient narrator who modalises his own position and who uses oerha b..nlrrendr in re’dt on to the characters. Type D (external, dramatised) 2 fo rr..ed WI en the narrator’s modal actlvltl inciudes what Uspensky calls ‘words of estrangement’ (1973: 84-85): ‘apparently’, ‘evidently’, ‘as if’, ‘it seemed’, etc. Epistemlc ally. these modal operators pretend that the author does not have acces: to the unconscious motives or conscious thoughts of the characters. This stance may be adopted in pursuance of a programme of ‘realist’ writing compatible with either Freudian or behaviourist psychological theory: according to the former, the type D narrator assumes the hiddenness of the most important psychological processes and keeps them hidden (a type A or B narrator also assumes their importance. and lays them bare); according to the latter, the significant processes are all at the surface, and so observed behaviour and not inner processes ought to be stressed in narrative. Evaluatively. the modal operators emphasize the distance between the narrator and the estranged character: the effort to understand is often indicated by comparative or metaphorical expressIons (‘It was as if he...‘) which can signify the narrator’s disapproval of or admiration for a position far removed from his own. one final point about type D external narration is that. apparently paraaoxicaily, words of estrangement allow uerhrr sent/end/ to be used in external perspective (Uspensky 1973: 85). The narrator can say ‘He appeared to be ashamed’ because he is not claiming certainty about the character’s state but only deducing a possible internal state from external appearance. Uspensky’s sporral and femporul plane of point of view seems to me to be ucquestionably valid, though less fundamental than the ideolc gical and the psychological, and partly overlapping with inem. In dealing uith the spatial aspect, Uspensky is strongly dependent on analogies from the visual arts including cinema and ohotography: so he is preoccupied with questions of distance (close-up or bird’s eye view), clarity or indeterminacy. sequence of focusses on different referents. He is also concerned with l.;;?ther the viewing position is close to that of a character or characters. or detached from any character, thus independent and ‘authorial’: and with shifts of pers.pective from author to character and from character to character. This part of his discussion of spatial perspective is really an aspect of ‘internal vs external’. the only specific distinction being that the content of the imagined perception consists of objects, acticns, landscapes, buildings, etc. The possible spatial perspectives discussed by Uspensky are generously and interestmgly illustrated from Russian texts, but there is n.: detailed examination of the linguistic devices which promote the sllusion of definite viewing positions for regarding fictitious concrete entit es. It is difficult anyway to get to grips with the linguistic specifics wher dealing with translated Russian texts (the same ib true of

U\pensky’s treatmem of temporal perspective. though here he does comment on the effects of different tenses) and so prefer to introduce a fresh English text in a moment and consider how illusions of space and perspective are created there. In my analysis. I will be concerned not simply with spatial perspective and illusmns of objectivity. but more generally with how such factors interconnect with other psychological. and evaluative. aspects of the narrative. Before starting the analysis. I must refer briefly IO Uspensky’s final plane of point of view. thephruseologlcal. In the relevant chapter he discusses differentiatmn of speech styles as indices to who is speaking. the r4ationships between different voices in the text (including ‘quasi-direct discomse after Volosinov). such phenomena as sko;. dnd so on. There is also a substantial and illuminating discussion of variations in naming practices in War and Pea-e. concentrating on the differences of attitude signalled by various naming and address forms. As a linguistic critic. I naturally regard such matters as of the most fundamenial importance to the structure of narrative discourse: but there is no Justification whatsoever for positing a separure phraseological plane of point of view since all the vast richness of information indicated by the language constitutes structure on the three basic planes dlscussed above. By separating the theorist simply expresses nostalgia for the text as off ‘phraseology’. decorative form. Mervyn Peake’s Torus Groun (1978) is a long. complicated novel, gothic and fantastic but also comic in an almost Dickensian fashion: there is a large cast of grotesque characters all marked by strong idiosyncrasies including peculiarities oi physique. dress and movement. The individual characters are presented as isolated within their own private worlds of motive and sensation; they are single-minded in the manner of ‘humours’: Swelter is animated by his plotting of revenge on Flay, the Countess totally preoccupied with her birds and cats, Sourdust lives for the ritual of the communi,j and ;:s administration. Steerpike is ambitious to dominate the castle and its inhabitants for his own personal gain. The mixture of isolation and openness IS managed compositionally by constant and abrupt switches of psychological perspective. The text focusses with precise concentra!ion on one character at a time, but this focus is moved

I

systemaucally from character to character, both chapter by chapter and in transitions within chapters. When a character is acting alone, s/he is often given exclusive attention; when a group are assembled. individuals are picked out one by one for their gestures and responses to one event, then the story develops and Peake goes the rounds again (Uspensky’s ‘sequential survey’, 1973: 60-62). Both internal perspective (B, omniscient) and external perspective (D. estranged) are employed, with frequent marked changes from one to the other. Internal B is needed to conve;’ knowledge of people’s motives and reactions, whereas external D serves to present them as alienated, caricatures.

The source of B is, by definition, the narrative discourse; D sometimes emanates from the narrator’s it offers one point of view, while sometimes character’s estranged perspectives on another. There seems to be almost no trace of internal A (‘mimetic’), so that when we watch one person with another’s metaphors used are as flamboyant and eyes, the defamiliarizing ‘literary’ as those of the narrator, and do not communicate a character’s world-view distinct from that of the narrative voice. As might be expected in a novel written by a painter, vls:lal descriptions are extremely frequent and prominent. ‘There are numerous set pieces picturmg the fantastic architecture of the castle. very amenable to analysis in Uspenskyan categories: there are bird’s eye views, panoramas, tableaux, aad so on. There is a constant evocation of scale, arrangement and texture, often done by recognisably ‘painterly’ sentences: ‘The afternoon light was beginning to wane in the sky although the picture of turrets and rooftops enclosed by the window frame was still warmly tinted’ (Titus Groan 1978: 127). But as we shall see. the sensation of spatial presence and location is produced less by static visual descriptions than by accounts of the orientation of the character: as they move around and interact, and so spatial perspective is dependent on psychological perspective and the structure of the action. Conversely. some aspects of psychological perspective are dependent on visual: grotesque descriptions of people’s appearances and gestures contribute generously to estranged perspective (D) [9]. I shall try to give subst‘rnce to the above observations. and further illustration of the lmguistic detail of my version of Uspensky’s theory. by a discussron of two episodes from Titus Groan. The first extract narrates the kitchen boy Steerpike’s escape from his incarceration by Lord Sepulchrave’s servant Flay m an isolated locked room upwards to a position of relative freedom and safet) on the roofs of Gormenghast: this is 1978: 126-131 in the Penguin edltion. must assume that it will be read carefully in full, for 1 can quote only a few sentences. For ease of reference I have numbered the paragraphs as follows:

I

(I) What had actually happened... (2) When the boy heard... (3) His body gave... (4) The striped... (5) As he gazed... (6) This time... (7) Steerpike (8) Again he fastened... (9) Suddenly, sitting... (IO) He reflected.. refused... (II) His fingers... (12) Although his limbs... (13) Steerpike. when... (14) he could see... (15) Steerpike’s eyes... (16) It was over an hour...

.

The

first

sentence,

with

its confident

episten

ic model

acruu/~~.

asserts

the

claim oi omniscience which dominates the narratrvc perspective of these two chapters. rhe method is going to be largely internal B. as we can see from (2). There a ‘:’ many verba senrrevdt: heard. watched, heard. rnstittct. rotpulse, looked, heard, mtttd, glanced. Notice that most of these are words of perception: aural as well as visual, but the dominant sense in the coming sequence is sight. In addition, these are largely words of acrive. deliberate perception. In English. many verbs of perception and thought exist in pairs: look/see, /&en/hear, /eartt,/knou: tttenrortse/remenlber.. The first member of each pair is an action, the second a state - ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ are sensations that can present themselves to a person without their seeking the sensation. In the presentation of Steerpike. words of active perception occur much more frequently than state terms, though the latter do occur as part of the internal technique. Other constructions in (2) contribute to the illusion that we are perceiving from the point of view of Steerpike. Steerpike hears Flay retreating into the distance, and cannot see him: ‘He had heard him turn a corner, and then a door was shut in the distance with a far bang, and thereafter there had been silence’. The syntax becomes more impersonal as the sounds become less accessible to Steerpike’s ears and comprehension: the first clause has a state verb heard, the second 2’ passive with a deleted agent. a door was shut, the third an existential. rhere had blPn srlence. The sentence gives the impression of Steerpike’s progressive inability to listen to and interpret a progressively attentuated source of sound. The paragraph ends with a characteristic sequence of action?, ~urnedfrotn, leanmg. glanced. characteristic of Steerpike in their deliberatene-s and, in the case of glanced, the sense of controlled perception. I wi!l develop this point with even clearer materials below. (3) makes one of Peake’s sudden excursions into external perspective. The externality of the point of view is emphasised by the words ‘appearance’ and ‘appear’, which in effect say that this comment ‘the appearance of being malformed’ is not dealing with the reality or essence of Steerpike. Interpretation and judgement from outside are suggested by the modaliser ‘it would be difficult to say’ and by the comment on Steerpike’s face, employing as it does not direct description but comparison and metaphor: ‘pale like clay’, ‘masklike’. And the response of an observer is suggested: Steerpike’s eyes are ‘of startling concentration’. Also the presence of a narrative voice is hinted by the unusual word g&bow (‘hunchbacked’) which is inescapably a learned, writerly term. All of these features add up to estranged external perspective (D) but this is not, in this context. sustained; it does not seem as if the external, metaphorical description of Steerpike’s appearance is intended to constitute a serious evaluative characterisation, but merely to direct the reader to consider Steerpike as a human shape within :he roofscape. to retain an impression of the climbing figure as well as imagining what he sees. There is m fact an exceptionally low incidence of external perspective in the remainder of the

229

episode; just view: in (S), true estranging resting-place young smile, tran:formed disappeared’;

four places where :he odd phrase suggests an external point of the judgement ‘his peculiar half-run...’ and its expansion via a conjunction ‘as though.. in as Steerpike reaches his first after his climb, he smiles and there occurs the comment ‘It was a a smile in keeping with his seventeen years, that suddenly the emptiness of the lo.ver part of his face and as suddenly in (15) and (16) the omniscient narrator stresses the limitations

.‘, (I I).

of Steerpike’s knowledge, specifically the fact that he does not know that he is about to come upon the ‘field of flagstones’: ‘He could not, of course. from where he was guess.. and ‘he was unaware that.. These external modalit; s are deviations from a consistently internal (B) narration sustained over four ps.ges. The internal perspective sticks doggedly with Steerpike’s thoughts and perceptions and the intense effort of his climb to freedom. I shall quickly show how this concentration is managed by the language, and comment on its effects; then add a note on how spatial perspective is created in the course of this construction of a focused consciousness. The dominant verbs of active vision (V below) continue from (5) as Steerpike first studies his escape route and then surveys the position on the rooftops at which he has arrived. They are accompanied by other mental process or thought predicates (Th) indicating conscious deliberation, and verbs denoting internal state or feeling (S). Let us plot these in (S)-(8):

.’

V

(5) he gazed downward, his attention (6) scrutinized, noticed, (7) (S) fastened

Th

S

(5) (6) (7) reflected (8) choosing, (5) quietly

.‘.

his eyes roved,

he took one last glance,

returned

noticed

his gaze, scrutinizing,

see (= understand),

survey,

searched..

concentrated

eve,y

.with

hts eyes

thought

;6) (7) (8) uneasy,

unpleasant,

the less he liked

There are relatively few state predicates yet. The sequence is visual survey. reflection and decision, then in (9)-( I I), action, as Steerpike goes out of the window and makes his climb up a sheer wall and a creeping plant. (9) is full of active, transitive clauses, as befits the point at which Steerpike, having made his decision, makes the final physical preparations for the climb; 1 have italicised the relevant verbs:

Apart from the two state predicates. this paragraph. by its lack of internal predicates and of authorial modality is presented from an external impersonal point of view (C): the typical mode of discourse for the narration of action-sequences. The motivation for this actional. impersonal paragraph is obvious: Steerpike is at the first crucial point af his escape, the moment at which he launches himself from the safety of his cell into the perils of the climb up the wall. But although this paragraph is for that reason foregrounded as C. it is not completely aberrant from the surrounding dtscourse. C is produced here by withdrawal of rerha se~tr~nclr and authorial modality. leaving the active transittvity patterns as the dominant linguistic feature. In fact. this transitivrty has been present throughout the internal perspective of tb- earlier passages (and continues). If we look back to the earlier paragraphs. we recall that they are predomindntly actions rather than states: gazed UI. continuously as ~nrrr~ed etc. This tran Aivity structure. with Steerpike

verh se~ttrendr oftb

agent. is the basic pattern for the whole sequence. (IO) and (I I) add some state adjectives and verbs giving hts emotions and physical sensations as he struggles on the wall and as he reaches various stages of achievement but they L>asically contmue a narration of actions and. .nr the psychological plane. decisions and tntentions. suggested earlier that thi; language achieves not only a concentration on Steerpike and an access to his consciousness but also an analysis of his character: deliberate. scheming. working out and manipulating everything to his ovvn advantage. TLerr is JUSI ths spurrol perspective to be noted: the illusion of seen objects .md of orientation in space. What referred to as ‘painterly’ sentences do occur when Peake IS indu’ging in obvious set pieces of visual evocation. They contain noun phrases referring IO the depicted objects, physical state adjectives often drawn from the voctbularies of colour. texture and geome::ical shape, process derbs. measurements. metaphors heightening the visual sense. technical terms frcm the graphic arts: for examples. see the sentence ‘The afternoon light.. quoted on p. 227 above, or several sentences in (16) (1978: l30-131), for instance “The sun was beginning to set in a violet haze and the stone field, save for the tiny figure of Steerpike, spread out emptily, the cold slabs catching the prevailing tint of the sky. Between the slabs there was dark moss and the long coarse necks of seeding grasses”. Acknowledging the presence and power of state descriptions such as these, however, the main and most continuous source of the impression of physical objects anrl their organisation in space is deictic and locative expressions integrated with the narration of actions and char-

I

I

.’

acters’ perceptions. In the sequence telling of Steerpike’s escape, it is essential that we recognise where he is at each point of his journey, and see what he sees: otherwise we cannot work out exactly what he is doing. In retrieving this information from the text, we construct a picture of the roofscape. first from the window of the locked room ((5) and (6)) and then from the vantage point which S.;erpike reaches after the second stage of his climb ((14)-(16)). The linguistic mechanisms for spatial orientation are very sample. Verbs of perception and action are either deictic in themselves (‘he left the window’. ‘he returned to the window’) or indicate angle or direction (‘leaning’. ‘turning around’) or they are qualified by deictic and locative phrases which orient surrounding objects on the point of reference occupied by the observer: gazed

dwnward...at

around

the room;

stones of the wall

the...drop: he relurned

his eyes roved...over

to the wmdow;

above [Peake’s

the qiladranqle

~tabcsj the Im~l.

etc.

him:

he hurrwd

the SII,: he scrutmued

below

the rcugh

outover

leanmg..

etc

A favourite technique. more expansive. is to follow the line of Steerprhe’s vision as he examines a series of roofs and buildings receding into the distance. Process verbs associated with the objects he sees move the reader from one object to the next in series: be ccrurinced

the rough

ended

a, a sloping

whxh.

m turn.

roof

stones of the wdll of slates. Thl\

led m great sweepng

roof

uhow

the lmtel

termlndied

curves towards

and notwd

that after

,n a long honzontal

the mam

rooftop\

\pme

tutmar

fret the\

Ifike d butlre\\.

of Gormenghat

(6)

A.;other excellent example of a I,nked sequence of perceived objects. with a very similar strucmre to that of the sentences gust quoted. is (14). Again a sequence of locations and directions is embedded under a verb of perceptron: ‘He could see how the ridge on which h; sat led in a wide curve to...‘. In 14) as elsewhere, ‘painterly’ devices such as shape terms and architectural terms are %equent and contribute importantly to the effect. but they are slotted auto perceptual and locative construciions relevant to the action. not state or exister,:;?l sentences. I want to terzr briefly to an earlier scene of the novel for some contrasting techniques: switches of perspective from internal to external; within internal

(

perspective, switches from character to character; the deCamiliarising use of external perspective in the transformation of human to grotesque or to machine; and accompanying alternatio snatisl point of view. The scene 1s a violen! encounter between Swelter. the cou.~. and Flay. just before the christening of Titus: 1978: 102-105; I have numbered the paragraphs as follows:

TQ sf

(I) Great activity... door knob moved..

(2) Suddenly the dooi opened... (5) Flay stiffened.. (6) Swelter.

.

(3) ‘Woah...’ (4) The as soon.. (7) A voice

(9’1 Although Mr. Flay... came out of the face . . . (8) The line ol... (II) Into the room... (12) ‘Mr. Flay...’ Swelter. as Mr. Flay spat.. This was brought out..

.

(IO) (13)

Spcrfrcrl: ( I) establishes the setting - ‘the cool room’ - aqd an observation point - ‘in the room’. The room is empty but from within ti:* room an invisible ohserver. a viewing point occupied by the narrator and tht reader, watches Flay enter: note the deictic word canre indicating movement towards the viewer: (2) ‘Suddenly the door opened and Flay came in’. Flay’s external appearance and his movements around the room at: described attd then he is located at the point 01 observation: (2) ‘he heard a voice beyond t re door’. (4) presents the emergence of Swelter in the door opening, from the p ;ychological and visual viewpoint of Flay: (4) ‘For some time. or so it seemed to Flay, taut areas of cloth evolved in a great arc and then at last above them a head around the panels and the eyes embedded in that head concentrated their gaze upon Mr. Flay’. Notice how Flay sees Swelt v as a shape, not as a person; and how the visual viewpoint switches from Flay to Swelter at the end of the sentence. From now on we see Flay from Swelter’s point of view. and vice versa, in alternating perspectives. Both see one another as objects. and so does the reader see both Estranged external D narration is the dominant mode. presenting both characters as grotesque automata. However, some internal perspective is reserved for Flay. and some active transitivity. (2). (5) and (8) contain some phrases externalising and estranging Flay: (2) ‘The negative dignity of the room threw him out in relief as a positive scarecrow’, (2) ‘he shot his chin forward like a piece of machinery’; (5) ‘Flay sti‘fened - if II is possible for something already as stiff as a piece of teak to r,tl.-_n still further’: (01 ‘The line of Mr. Flay’s mouth, always thin and hard, became even thinner as though scored with a needle’. The estranged external treatment of Flay is modest, however, compared with the externatisation of Swelter. I have referred to (4). which presents him as a massive configuration ot ‘areas of cloth’. There are also classic markers of estranged external - diverse grotesque metaphors, modalizers such as ‘as though’. ‘seem’. evaluative adjectives - attached to Swelter in (6). (7) (‘a voice came out of the face’), (8) (‘the white mountain’), Illustrate the technique at its peak of intensity:

(9)

(IO), and (13). (6) will

Suelter. as SOWir; he saw who II was. stopped dead. and across his face htlle bdtows of flesh ran rwftly here and there untd. as though they had determwed to adhere to swept up mto both oceans of soft cheek, leavmg bt.ween them a vacuum, sbce cut from a melon. It was horrible.. It was as though nature had lasl amde, as a concep!. as a manlfeslatmn 01 pleasure, had been a matake. Swelter the Idea had been abused.

Swelter

receives

virtually

no

internal

treatment.

The

the same Impulse. they a gapmg segmenl bkr a control. As though the for here on the face of

only

oerba senrrendr

attributed

lo him in the whole passage

are saw (6) and gu:rd

(10). Where

an

internal alternative would have been possible, an external expression is preferred: Swelter does not ‘concentrate’ on Flay. but wears ‘an expression of comic concentration’ (10). Flay’s responses and perctptions. howevzi. are frequently mentioned: e.g. (2) cured. fo hrs mrnd. de/unce, etc.: (9) learred. rgnore, his pride was wounded, leumed, hatred. For this reason UQ are ‘on Flay’s side’ in his feud with Swelter: it is not only that Swelter ib the more hideous of these two ogres - though that certainly is the effect of Ihe estrangement devices piled on Swelter - but also that Flay’s feelings, through the reserving for him of internal B treatment, remain accessible to us. He could hardly be called sympathetic. but his actions are motivated and comprehensible: a he suddenly \trode past the chef tourrds the door.. he pulled the than &shed the hear-ybrars bnks dcross the laceof hn tdun,e~ (I 3)

:

This narrative climax is signalled by the appropriate transltivitl strut re ol action clauses, as happens at the crucial points in Steerpike’s rscape. At both of these places in the text. transitivity contributes simultaneously to narratix.e progression and to psychological and ideological point of VKW.

Summary

and prospect

In this paper I have tried 10 do two things. First, I have argued. follouinp Uspensky. that a multi-category approach to pLlmt of view or narrdtne perspective is necessary, and I have explored Uspensky’s four ‘planes’ rf point of view, adjusting and furt!ler differentiating his model in certain respects. particularly in drawing ;iitention 10 the various overlaps and intersectlons in the system and in suggesting that a separate phraseological level is redundant if the other perspectives are theorised and analysed as. m essence. modes of discourse. Second, I have attempted lo identify those linguistic construcrions which are more active in creating the perspectives discussed by Uspensky and by mvself. The linguistic apparatus which have

I

advance the argument. seems to me the most

A linguistic valuable

model of the kind used in the present

instrument

in pursuing

this objective

paper

[IO].

References

In:

Althusser. LOUIS. 1977. ‘Marxnm and humamsm For Marx (trans. Ben Brewster). London: New Lelt Books. Bakhun. MM :“hR. Rabelan and his world (trans. H&me Iswolsky). Cnmbndge. MA: h!IT Press. Bakhrm. M.M 1973, Problems of DosIoevsky’% poel~cs (wans. R.W. Ro~sel). Ann Arbor. Ml: Ardls. Berger. Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1971. The social concIr”c11on c.f reabty. Harmondsworth: PeogUlo Bwlh. Wayne C 1961. The rhe1onc of hc”on. Chicago. IL: Uwers~ry of ChIcago Press. Cluysenaar. Anne. 1976. A? mtroducr~on lo literary sly11.IICS. London: Balsford. Coward. Roralmd and John Elhs. 1977. Language and ma1enabsm. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fouler. R. 1977a Lmguwws and the novel. London: Methuen. ‘ouler. R. 1977b. The referemlal code and narrahve authowy. Language and Style IO: 129-161. Fouler. R. 1979~ AnIl-language in fawn. Slyle 13: 259-278. Fouler. R IY7Yh. Prebmmarles to a soaolrngu~bt~c theory of blerary dnscourse. Poeuc, 8: 531-556. Fouler. R 1979~. Lmgowtlcs and. and versus. poetics. Journal of L~lernry Semantics 8: 3-21. Fouler. R. 1980 LmguisIlc cr~11c1sm. UEA Paper m Lmg”!rIlcs I I: l-26. Fo~lcr. R , R. Hedge. G.R. Kress and T. Trcw 1979. LanSuage and conlrol. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Genelle. Gtirard. 1972 Figures III. Pans: Seuil. (Engbsh trans. by Jaw E. Lewm. 1980. Narrawe discourse. Ithaca. NY: Cornell Umvers~ly Press). Hnlbday. M.A.K. 1971. ‘Lmgwsuc funanon and bterary style: an mquq mlo the language of Wdbam Goldlog’s ‘The mhentors”. In: Seymour Chatman, ed.. Lwrary style: a symposium. New York and London: Oxford Umvers~ty Press. pp. 330-365. Halbday. M.A.K. 1978a. Language as social setmow. London: Edwan Arnold. Hdlbday. M.A.K. 1978b. ‘Antdanguages’. In: M.A.K. Hallrday, Language as soaal semiotic. pp. 164-182. Krras. G.R.. cd. 1976. Halbday: system end function m language. London: Oxford Umvers~ly Press Kress. G.R. 1978. Poelry as anh-language: a reconslderalon of Donne’s ‘Noclurnall upon S. Lucles day’. PTL 3. 32i-344. [IO] The general prmc~ples \Lhlch would gwde Ihls future work have been sketched ,n Fowler (1979b). The point IS not that speech (or aher discourse) III factIon IS representaIional, modelling ‘real’ speech m ‘bfe’. Apar from the fact that wr111en language could not Iranscribe speech m this way. I would certamly no1 wsh IO rewve either a rnm~e~cor a vulgar marxlst approach 10 ficlion. 1 am argumg that a novel (say) IS an mtersec,ion of numerow discourses.some of them developed wthm Ihe genre of the novel ~tsell and some havmg sourcc~ outside Ihe novel. All - including dlccourses or codes pecuhar 10 some slage in the hIstory of f!cIlon - arc Llrmed in the conlinuous processof reproducmg 6nd regulalmg soaal s1ruc1urcs.and all involve thee-aesor ideologieswhich participate m soaal practice. Halbday’s ‘social $emloIx linpuwtcs provides the best, if no! only. analyhc model for dwussmg the rela1lonshlpsbetween language. ideology and society.

Kress. G.R. and R. Hedge. 1979. Language a’. Ideology. London. Routledge and Kcgan Paul. Lyons. J. 1977. Semantics.Cambridge: Cambridge Umversity Press. McHale, Brian. 1978. Free indirect discource. a suney of recent accounts. PTL 3: 249-2X7 Spllzer, Leo. 194R. Linguistics and hrerary history. Pnnce~on. NJ: Prmceton Unwen~~y Precs. Peake, M. 1978. Titus Groan. Harmondswo!:h: Penguin Books. Uspewky. B. 1973. A poetics 01 composition (trans. \‘alentma Zavarm and Suwn Wlttlg) Berkeley,CA: Unrversity of Califorma Press. VoloSmov, V.N. 1973. Marxwn and the philosophy of language (trans. Lad&w Mdtqka and I.R. Tmmlk) New York: Seminar Pres>.

Roger Fowler is professor of English and lmgulstics al the Unwen~~y of East Anglia. Non*lch. England. He has held wsilmg professorshapsat the Unwers~ryof Cahforma. Berkeley. .md Brou 1 Unwersity. Rhode Island. He has pubhshed ten books and numerous arl~cleson lmgwstu and the theoretical and practical study of hl.rary texts and on soc~olmgutst~cs.