‘Represented perception’: A study in narrative style

Poetics 9 (1980) 363-381 0 North-Holland Publishing Company

‘REPRESENTED

PERCEPTION’:

A STUDY TN NARRATIVE

STYLE *

LAUREL BRINTON

Critics have long recognized a narrative technique variously called style indirectlibre, erlebte speech and thought, a technique which expresses a character’s thoughts and speech in the authorial past tense and third person but also in the character’s own emotive language. This style, an alternative to both direct and indirect discourse, is marked by specific linguistic features, both syntactic and semantic, and by formal cues in the narrative context. With this style, an author can directly represent, rather than present or report, consciousness with no implication of internal speech. This paper examines the use of a similar technique to express the lower levels of consciousness, namely, a character’s perceptions of the external world. Termed ‘represented perception’, it proves to have many of the linguistic features of represented speech and thought and some peculiarly its own. It functions importantly in blending the external and internal worlds in a fictional text: the physical world, as expressed normally in authorial description, becomes sense perceptions in a character’s consciousness. Represented perception also offers the only alternative to indirect report of a character’s perceptions. As with represented speech and thought, an author can directly represent perceptions with no suggestion of internal speech. The paper concludes by recognizing represented perception and represented speech and thought as complementary parts of one coherent style.

Rede, or represented

From the late nineteenth century until the present, literary critics and grammarians have studied the linguistic and literary features of the narrative style variously called style indirect libre (Bally 1912) or free indirect style, verschleierte Rede (Kalepky 1913), Redeals Tatsache (Lerch 1914), erlebte Rede (Lorck 1921), pseudo-objective Rede (Spitzer 1928) independent form of indirect discourse (Curme 1905), represented speech (Jespersen 1924), substitutionary narration (Fehr 1938), narrated monologue (Cohn 1966) quasi-direct discourse (VoloGnov 1973), represented discourse (DoleZel 1973), or represented speech and thought (Banfield 1977b) [l ] . Although scholars cannot agree on a name for the style, which is common in the modern novel, they are generally agreed upon its features and * I would like to thank Ann Banfield, Julian Boyd, Glenn Butterton, and Alain Renoir of the University of California, Berkeley, and the reviewer for Poetics, Lubomiir Doleiel, for useful criticisms, suggestions and references. ill Terms such as indirect interior monologue (Humphrey 1954) orselectiveomniscience (Friedman 1955) name narrative techniques somewhat broader and less explicitly defined than free indirect style. In this paper, I will use Banfield’s term represented speech ond thought. 363

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uses. This style offers an alternative to both indirect and direct discourse, for by using it, an author can directly represent, rather than present, a character’s thoughts, feelings, or speech in the third person and past tense of narration yet in the character’s own expressive or emotive language. What has not been well studied in regard to this style is the range or depth of a character’s consciousness which can be represented. Can it represent the lower and perhaps unreflective levels of consciousness, such as sense perceptions, and thus offer an alternative to pure narrative description? In his study of the development of “reported speech” in the novels of Flaubert, Ullmann claims that Flaubert’s “one great obstacle to the attainment of [an] attitude of artistic impersonality” is his failure to render physical description in represented speech and thought (1964: 104). In selected works of James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Joyce Cary, however, many passages seem to represent natural phenomena as sense perceptions occurring in a character’s consciousness, again while maintaining authorial person and tense. I will call these passages ‘represented perception’ and will, in this paper, examine their contents, linguistic features, and literary uses in comparison to those of represented speech and thought. Ultimately, we will ask whether represented speech and thought and represented perception are two distinct parts of one coherent style.

1. The context of represented speech and thought Represented speech and thought has generated much scholarly interest not only because it is a style pervasive in the modern novel, but more importantly because it sheds light on questions in literary theory, linguistic theory, and the philosophy of language, questions which are much larger than those of stylistics alone. For literary theory, this style demands a more precise definition than is generally given of the author’s involvement in the text. It is central in discussions of the concept of the narrator (or speaker) and also the concept of point of view, especially when questions of shifts in point of view, multiple points of view, or textual coherence arise and when terms such as omniscient narrator or third-person point of view are used. Represented speech and thought is a common stream-of-consciousness or mimetic device and hence is important in the determination of the artistic purpose and effect of these devices. Finally, the use of this style is important in the development of the form and content of the modern novel, with its unobtrusive or missing narrator and objective narrative and, at the same time, its “inward turning” or emphasis on the thoughts and feeling of the characters. The scholarship on these subjects is extensive and includes general literary studies and works on the style of individual authors such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Viiginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James, and Gustave Flaubert (see, for example, Auerbach 1974; Bronzwaer 1970; Biihler 1937; Cohn 1966,1978; Friedman 1955; Hamburger 1973; Pascal 1977; Ullmann 1964). Useful summaries of the literary

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scholarship may be found in Cohn (1966, 1978) McHale (1978) Ullmann (1964), and VoloSinov (1973). The orthodox approach to the style of represented speech and thought has been a linguistic one. Traditional grammarians studied the style’s relationship to and possible derivation from its nearest linguistic relatives, direct discourse and indirect discourse (see, for example, Curme 1905; Jespersen 1924; Poutsma 1929; and critiques in Banfield 1973; McHale 1978). The Geneva linguists (Bally 1912; Lips 1926) and the Vossler school (Kalepky 1913; Lerch 1914; Lorck 1921; Spitzer 1928) were also concerned with specifying the linguistic features of the style. Pascal (1977) contains a thorough summary of this early work. Represented speech and thought, however, also enters into larger questions of linguistic theory. It is important in linguistic studies of units larger than a sentence: in discourse analysis and in the specification of text grammars (see, for example, Fillmore 1974; Hendricks 1967; van Dijk 1972). It is also a valid subject for pragmatic studies (Fillmore 1974) or for studies of “functional syntax” (Kuno 1975 ; Kuno and Kaburaki 1977). Most importantly, represented speech and thought participates in the ongoing dispute over the communicative function of language, for this literary style seems to permit a first person only in first-person narration and never to permit a second person. In distinctions of different types of language use, e.g., discours/ hisfoire (Benveniste 1971), dialogic (monologic)/impersonal (Fillmore 1974), or reportive/non-reportive (Kuroda 1973), represented speech and thought clearly falls in the latter categories, not the former ones, which are all speaker-hearer models [2]. Represented speech and thought, therefore, is often considered a purely literary phenomenon. Primarily linguistic examinations of the style include Bicker-ton (1967), Bantield (1973, 1978) Dillon and Kircbhoff (1976) Fillmore (1974) and Kuroda (1976). A full discussion of the theoretical implication of represented speech and thought for literary and linguistic theory is beyond the scope of this paper; however, I will, with certain differences, assume the framework of Banfield (1973,1977a, 1977b, 1978). Represented speech and thought is also relevant to discussions outside of the means of linguistic linguistic and literary disciplines, for it is an important representation. The problem of representation is currently receiving considerable attention in the fields of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of language, as well as theoretical linguistics (see, for example, Chamiak and Wilks 1976; Dreyfus 1972; Rosch 1973; Schank and Adelson 1977; Winograd 1972). Extensive bibliographies for all of these fields may be found in Walker (1978).

[2] Corresponding to these linguistic distinctions are ones of literary representation such as the Platonic mimesisldiegesis, &onciation/reproduction (Lips 1926), presentation/representation, showing/telling, and scene/summary (see McHale 1978: 258).

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1.1. IlIe linguistic markers of represented speech and thought In the earliest discussion of it, represented speech and thought was seen as a peculiar mixture of the direct and indirect discourse (Tobler 1897), but it is actually something in between. It has the shifted tenses and third-person pronouns of indirect discourse, the nonembeddable clauses and present time and space deictics of direct discourse, and parenthetical inserts such as he felt, thought, said. Hence, the author does not present a character’s speech as in direct quotation, nor interpretively report or paraphrase speech and thought as in indirect contexts. He also avoids presenting thoughts as interior speech as in stream-of-consciousness. Instead, he represents thoughts which may even be unformulated or unarticulated for the character, thoughts which are on the “threshold of verbalization” (Cohn 1978: 103). Although passages may be ambiguous between represented speech and thought and pure narration, the style can yet be said to display distinct syntactic and semantic features. See DoleZel (1973) and Dillon and Kirchhoff (1976) for useful tabulations of these linguistic markers. The following passage from Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” shows many of these features: (1) Never had she imagined she could look like that. Is mother right? she thought. And now she hoped her mother was right. (1971: 79-80) First, we see that the third person “she” is the subject of consciousness, termed the “experiencing self’ by Cohn (1966: 99) and symbolized SELF by Banfield (1978: 290), and it is the referent of the expressive content of the sentences. In ordinary discourse, however, the referent is not the third person, but the first-person speaker. In represented speech and thought, moreover, the third-person pronoun rather than the proper name generally indicates the SELF. Third-person reflexive pronouns may occur even when there is no third-person sentence subject, or the third person may be plural without any suggestion of simultaneous speech and thought. Second, the narrative past tense and present and future time deictics are co-temporal: “And now she hoped her mother was right”. The deictics represent the here and now of the character’s act of consciousness. The co-temporality is perhaps best explained as the simultaneity of the moment of consciousness with an event in the narrative past. Represented speech and thought often has a special verbal past tense, the imparfait rather than the passt simple of narration in French and the past progressive rather than the simple past in English; the -ing morpheme often shows simultaneity in English (Brusendorff 1930). Represented speech and thought also uses the shifted tenses of the modals found with past meaning only in sequence of tenses, such as indirect discourse: “Never had she imagined she couZd look like that”. Third, in represented speech and thought, pronouns, demonstrattives, definite articles, and definite noun phrases which have no antecedent in the previous discourse may occur. Fillmore explains this failure in identification:

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“instances of definite reference is narrated monologue passages are ‘definite’ from the character’s point of view and need not meet the conditions for definite reference that characterize dialogic speech” (1974: 17). Other characters, therefore, are often referred to only by pronouns or by names which show their relationship to the SELF, as with “mother” in the above passage. Fourth, represented speech and thought contains the nonembeddable, independent clauses of direct quotation. These clauses often have expressive or emotive content, which is attributable to the SELF. Rhetorical questions and clauses with preposed adverbs (never) or initial conjunctions (and), as in the above passage, are examples. Represented speech and thought may also have expressive structures such as interjections, exclamations, lexical filers, repetitions, or hesitations, optative or incomplete sentences. None of these can occur in the subordinate clauses of indirect speech. Fifth, in addition to emotive syntactic structures belonging to the character, passages of represented speech and thought contain certain lexical items which express the character’s emotions, attitudes, judgments, evaluations, and beliefs, his “epistemic and judgmental meaning” (Fillmore 1974: 16). These semantic features include certain qualifying adjectives, generally prenominal (e.g., dear, good, damned), epithets, qualifying adverbs (e.g., probably, miserably), nicknames or pet names, and attitudinal nouns (e.g., fool, nincompoop) (DoleZel 1973: 34-39). Sixth, in represented speech and thought, verbs of consciousness or of communication occur in parentheticals: “Is mother right? she thought”. Outside of represented speech and thought, these verbs introduce indirect speech, direct speech, or neither, Kate Hamburger says that “Verben innere Vorgange” or “verbs of inner action”, such as think, believe, or feel, are a mark of narration (1973 : 134). More rightly, when used as parentheticals, they signal represented speech and thought. Finally, represented speech and thought may be negatively characterized as having no indications of the communicative function, no direct commands, vocatives, second person, nor sentence adverbs such as frankly. Indications of a character’s dialect or pronunciation are not usual, but random lexical items, slang or jargon, can occur. 1.2. The literay function of represented speech and thought Represented speech and thought functions artistically in enabling the author to overcome the limitations of one narrator and hence one point of view per text. In fact, a narrator, defined precisely as a first-person “speaker”, can be abandoned entirely, and different consciousnesses or points of view can be directly in third-person narration. Represented speech and thought portrays these consciousnesses more directly and with greater reality, range, and depth than does quotation or inner monologue; it has greater mimetic or streamof-consciousness quality, for “the words on the page are not identified as words running through [the character’s] mind” but suspended “on the threshold of verbalization in a manner that cannot be achieved by direct quotation” (Cohn 1978: 103). Represented speech and thought also creates no “breaks in narration”, no new

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speakers. While different points of view are expressed, the author’s voice “speaks” throughout, and a dual perspective can be maintained. Baxtin poses this major problem for prose writers: their world is full of other people’s speech - we would include thoughts, feelings, and perceptions - and they must incorporate them on the plane of their “speech” without destroying it (1971: 194). Represented speech and thought is the only way to do so directly. A character’s expressions and pure narration mix freely, then, with no perceptible transition: there is a “seamless juncture between narrated monologues and their narrative contexts” (Cohn 1978: 103). As a result, the inner and outer worlds of the character can truly become one. Represented speech and thought also contributes to authorial impersonality and to the loss of a central authority in a fictional text. Like direct quotation, it is unreliable narration, for the validity of the subjective material of one’s consciousness is always questionable. Pure narration, however, is, within the fictional framework, absolutely reliable. Finally, the use of represented speech and thought may reflect either an author’s sympathetic identification with the characters in the text or his ironic distancing from them (see Cohn 1978; McHale 1978).

2. Problems in the representation of perceptions Out of an examination of represented speech and thought arise two questions important for the study of represented perception. First, Kuroda asks: “What levels of a character’s consciousness is erlebte Rede supposed to represent? (1976: 119). Does it represent only thoughts and heard speech or also lower levels of consciousness, percpetions and sensations? Second, must one restrict represented speech and thought and likewise represented perception to those contexts exhibiting all or most of the linguistic markers of the style? Again, Kuroda says, “But if we decide to rely on the semantic or literary interpretation of texts, the boundary of erlebte Rede becomes difficult to draw” (1976: 119) Cohn also questions whether the style should include any “vision of reality that is not the narrator’s own, but that of a fictional character, the so-called ‘vision avec’, which does not necessarily conform to precise linguistic criteria” (1978: 110). Is the style to be as broad, therefore, as to include all sentences attributable to the mind of a character, even if the linguistic signs are absent? 2.1. Reflective and unrejlective consciousness Kuroda distinguishes two levels of consciousness, reflective consciousness and spontaneous or unreflective consciousness (1976: 121) [3]. Elaborating upon this [ 31 ‘Reflective’ is perhaps a problematical term, for it has connotations of reminiscence or meditation not desired in our discussion, An alternative set of terms, conscious and unconscious, presents more problems, however, than do Kuroda’s terms.

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distinction, Banfield defines unreflective consciousness as “sensation, perception or experience” (1977b: 8) and limits represented perception to the expression of unreflective consciousness and represented speech and thought to the expression of reflective consciousness. In the course of this paper, we will see, however, that represented perception may be either unreflective or reflective (see section 3.3). Without supplying evidence, I will suggest that represented thought may also be either unreflective or reflective. One may have something “on one’s mind” without reflecting on it. Critics agree, in fact, that a virtue of represented speech and thought is that it allows the expression of a character’s unarticulated, unexpressed, or unconscious thoughts (see sections 1 .I and 1.2). The author selects, orders, and gives expression to the unformed material of the character’s consciousness. Cohn expands the power of represented speech and thought, or what she calls “narrated monologue”, to the representation of unreflective thoughts: Within the narrated monologue we move closer to the possibility of rendering such thoughts and feeling of a character as are not explicitly formulated in his mind . . . this technique lends itself better to the twilight realm of consciousness. It can give a more nearly convincing presentation of that part of the psyche which is hidden from the world and half-hidden from the censoring self. , . it can also more readily show the mind a recipient of passing images and “sensory perceptions”. . . (1966: 110).

The only constraint put upon the consciousness expressed in both represented speech and thought and represented perception, therefore, is that it be possible for the character to bring it to the level of reflection, that it be within the character’s possible knowledge. Reflective represented perception might better be called reflective thought. It is thought about a perception, occurring either simultaneously with or immediately after the perception. Represented speech might likewise be called represented thought, or speech filtered through the thoughts of a character. Yet I am reluctant to make no distinctions between represented thought and represented perception because they show linguistic and functional differences and indeed have different contents. Represented perception deals with the world outside, whereas represented thought deals with the inner world of a character’s feelings and thoughts. 2.2. me necessity of linguistic markers The question of the necessary presence of the linguistic markers of represented speech and thought and represented perception is less serious than the one of unreflective consciousness. The linguistic signs are the surface manifestations of an underlying category or style; therefore, one artificially limits represented speech and thought and represented perception if one insists on the presence of all the linguistic signs of the style. As one is dealing with a literary style, however, one must begin with the syntactic signs, the explicitly defined semantic signs or lexical items, and the formal cues in the context. When these signs are missing, passages of

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represented speech and thought and represented perception can sometimes be delimited by meaning, content, and point of view, or they must remain ambiguous. Represented perception, however, exhibits most of the linguistic signs of represented speech and thought and some signs peculiarly its own.

3. Represented perception What exactly is represented perception? Like represented speech and thought, it has received a variety of names: style indirect libre de perception (Lips 1926), substitutionary perception or erlebte Wahmehmung (Fehr 1938), and erlebte Eindtick (Biihler 1937) [4]. Represented perception is a literary style whereby an author, instead of describing the external world, expresses a character’s perceptions of it, directly as they occur in the character’s consciousness. By using this style, the author avoids indirect report of the perpections; he can directly verbalize the perceptions without implying that the character himself has verbalized them. Considered as a problem of mimesis, perceptions are, or course, not verbal or even potentially verbal. This consideration has relevance when translated into a linguistic problem [S]: perceptions cannot occur in direct quotation. Fehr (1938: 98) offers the following examples: (a) “Here comes Jack,” said Fred (b) On turning round Fred saw Jack coming across the street towards him. (c) “Look!” Fred turned round. Jack was coming across the street towards him. Sentence (a) can only be interpreted as speech about a perception, not as a transcription of a perception; (b) is a report about a perception, and (c) is represented perception. On the other hand, speech, which is verbal, occurs naturally in direct quotation. Thought, although not verbal, seems to be potentially so; when viewed as speech, self-communication, or interior monologue, it occurs readily in direct quotation. Thought may also, with greater mimetic quality, be expressed in represented speech and thought. Finally, both speech and thought may be reported indirectly in that-clauses. For the presentation of a character’s perceptions, the language, as shaped by mimetic restrictions, offers fewer options than for the presentation of a character’s speech or thought. Excluding represented perception, only authorial report or description is possible. Here, an author may report the perception from an outer perspective with verbs such as look, gaze, watch, and listen or from an inner perspective with see, smell, hear, perceive, and become [4] Again, the term sensory impression (Bowling 1950) names a less explicitly defined phenomenon that does represented perception. [S] McHale (1978: 257-9) suggests that the usualapproach to the problem of represented speech and thought, which has been to consider linguistic categories as primary, should be rejected in favor of an approach which considers literary categories of mimesis and diegesis as Primary.

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awure ojI In either case, he can report on the perception only in an oblique context, with a noun phrase object or a clausal complement to the verb. Represented perception, however, provides a means for the direct portrayal of a character’s perception in a literary text. A character’s sight, hearing, or smell, or more rarely his touch or taste, can be directly represented as consciousness, reflective or unreflective. The modern novelists I have examined, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Joyce Cary, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf, use represented perception almost as frequently as represented speech and thought. In the remainder of this paper, I would like to look at the linguistic and literary features of one fairly typical passage of represented perception from Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” and compare it with other such passages: (2) ‘Laura put back the receiver, flung her arms over her head, took a deep breath, stretched and’let them fall. brcHuh,” she sighed, and the moment after the sigh she sat up quickly. ‘She was still, listening. dAll the doors in the house seemed to be open. eThe house was alive with soft, quick steps and running voices. fThe green baize door that led to the kitchen regions swung upon and shut with a muffled thud. gAnd now there came a long, chuckling absurd sound. hit was the heavy piano being moved on its stiff castors. ‘But the air! iIf you stopped to notice, was the air always like this ? kLittle faint winds were playing chase in at the tops of the windows, out at the doors. ‘And there were two tiny spots of sun, one on the inkpot, one on a silver photograph frame, playing too. mDarling little spots. “Especially the one on the inkpot lid. ‘It was quite warm. PA warm little silver star. qShe could have kissed it. (197 1: 70) Represented perception is often introduced by author&l description of a character’s physical actions or of his perceptions [6]. In this passage, we see exterior portrayals of Laura’s actions (a, b) and of her perceptions (c). More frequently, description of a character’s perceptions only precedes represented perception, as in the following excerpts: (3) (a) He watched their ITight; bird after bird: a dark flash, a swerve, a flash again, a dart aside, a curve, a flutter of wings. (Joyce 1969: 224) (b) She gazed back over the sea, at the island. But the leaf was losing its sharpness. It was very small. (Woolf 1970 : 2 16) (c) He looked at his mother. Her blue eyes were watching the cathedral quietly. She seemed again to be beyond him. something in the eternal repose of the uplifted cathedral, blue and noble against the sky, was reflected in her, something of the fatality. What was, was. (Lawrence 1961: 294) [rj] In a similar fashion, the context of represented speech and thought often contains formal cues such as verbs of speech or thought, indirect quotation, or direct quotation which signal the style.

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Fehr (1938) terms these introductory devises “perception indicators” or “window openers”, which function like parentheticals in represented speech and thought. They may be explicit, may be only hinted at, or may be missing entirely. See Fehr (1938: 99-100) for many interesting textual examples of perception indicators from Hemingway. In turn, represented perception quite consistently introduces or intermingles with represented speech and thought. In passage (2) sentences d-h, k-l, and o-p are clearly represented perception, j, m-n, and q are represented speech and thought, and i is perhaps ambiguous between the two. Further examples of this intermingling are as follows: (4) (a) The road gleamed white, and down below in the hollow the little cottages were in deep shade. How quiet it seemed after the afternoon. Here she was going down the hill to somewhere where a man lay dead, and she couldn’t realize it. Why couldn’t she? (Mansfield 197 1: 83) (b) And all at once the sun burned through in a new place, at the side, and shot out a ray that hit the Eagle and Child, next the motor boat factory, right on the new signboard. A sign, I thought. (Cary 1969: 5-6) Again, Fehr (1938) notices the merging of represented perception and represented speech and thought as a characteristic feature of the styles 171. The co-occurrence of these styles suggests that both are representations of similar aspects of a character’s consciousness. 3.1. l’7ze linguistic markers of represented perception Represented perception shows many of the linguistic markers of represented speech and thought. The third person is co-referential with the subject of consciousness. Since a character does not usually appear in his own perception of the external world, simple third-person pronouns are infrequent; possessive pronouns, however, are frequent: (5) (a) Th e c1ou d s were drifting above him silently and silently the seatangle was drifting below him; and the grey warm air was still: and the new wild life was singing in his veins. Where was his boyhood now? (Joyce 1969: 17071) (b) There, quite by chance, the first thing she saw was the charming girl in the mirror, in her black hat . . . (Mansfield 1971: 79) [7] Fehr (1938: 102) discusses the possibility of ambiguity using the following example from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: “I walked out beyond the town to look at the weather (:) The bad weather was coming over the mountains from the sea”. If this is a passage of represented perception, “bad weather” means the visible aspect of the sky; if it is represented speech and thought, however, “bad weather” expresses a judgment the character has made about the climactic conditions.

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(c) When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty.. . (Woolf 1970: 9) The third-person subject of consciousness can be plural, without implying that the subjects all perceived something at the same time, or it can be a generalized or even an imagined consciousness. Numerous passages in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers occur when Paul is out walking with Miriam or Clara, and the expressiveness must be attributed to both. Lengthy sections in the chapter “Time Passes” in To the Lighthouse are clearly represented perception yet “belong” to no character; Virginia Woolf points out this seeming paradox: (6) Listening (had there been anyone to listen) . . . only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing. (Woolf 1970: 153) The co-temporality of the past tense with the present time deictics occurs in represented perception, although perhaps not as frequently as in represented speech and thought: (7) (a) Now the broad road was crossed. The lane began, smoky and dark. Women in shawls and men’s tweed caps hurried by. Men hung over the palings; the children played in the doorways. A low hum came from the mean little cottages. (Mansfield 197 1: 84) (b) The sea was more important now than the shore. Waves were all round them, tossing and sinking, with a log wallowing down one wave; a gull riding on another, (Woolf 1970: 216) (c) The young man opposite had long since disappeared. Now the other two got out. The late afternoon sun shone on women in cotton frocks and little, sun-burnt barefoot children. It blazed on a silky yellow flower with coarse leaves which sprawled over a bank of rock. The air ruffling through the window smelled of the sea. Had Isabel the same crowd with her this weekend, wondered William? (Mansfield 1971: 159-60) In the Mansfield passage (2), now cooccurs with came in g. Also important in represented perception is to co-occurrence of the past tense with certain spatial adverbs which locate the narrative perspective in the here of the character’s conciousness: (8) All that was venerable ceased here. The new building was not only new but declared itself to be so; intended only for offices, and enclosed behind by stableyards, no uniformity of architecture had been thought necessary. Jane Austen,NorthangerAbBey (in Biihler 1937: 158) The past progressive, the special form marking simultaneity,

appears in sentence k:

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’

“Little faint winds were playing chase . . .“. The past progressive occurs often in other examples of represented perception: (9) (a) The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm. (Joyce 1976: 22) (b) The air was soft and grey and mild and evening was coming. (Joyce 1969: 59) (c) The powder-puff clouds were getting harder and rounder. The sky was turning green as a starboard light, (Cary 1969: 47) Fehr (1938: 101) argues that the presence of a progressive verb form is necessary for a passage to be classified as substitutionary perception. According to Fehr, the progressive functions in putting one in the midst of processes. Represented perception also consists of nonembeddable clauses with expressive structures. Sentences can begin with coordinating or subordinating conjunctions, as in (2)g or the following: (10) (a) And the river crawling along, the colour of pit iron, like a stream of lava just going solid. (Cary 1969: 78) (b) But the leaf was losing its sharpness. (Woolf 1970: 216) Sentences

of represented

perception

may contain

interjections

or lexical fillers:

(11) Yes, the breeze was freshening. The boat was leaning, the water was sliced sharply and fell away in green cascades, in bubbles, in cataracts. Cam looked down into the foam . . . (Woolf 1970: 187) Incomplete

sentences occur frequently,

as in (2)p, and repetitions

are common:

(12) The train was full of fellows: a long long chocolate tram with cream facings . . . The telegraph poles were passing, passing. (Joyces 1969: 20) Sentences of represented perception can also consist of strings of related structures or expressions, sometimes leading up to a climax: (13) The guard went to and fro opening, (Joyce 1969: 20) Questions and exclamations,

closing, locking,

unlocking

however, are rather rare in represented

(14) (a) They were like bright birds that had this one afternoon, on their way to (b) Then suddenly, as a train comes out of the clouds again - and the bar of

the doors.

perception:

alighted in the Sheridan’s garden for where? (Mansfield 197 1: 8 1) of a tunnel, the aeroplane rushed out smoke curved behind and it dropped

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down and it soared up and wrote one letter after another - but what word was it writing? Virginia Woolf,Mrs. Dalloway (in Brusendorff 1930: 245) (c) How her frock shone! (Mansfield 1971: 84) Banfield (1977b: 9) argues that exclamations can only be read as reflective consciousness and, therefore, represented speech and thought, not represented perception. These examples are, in fact, representations of reflective consciousness, but as they concern perceptions of the external world, I class them as represented perception. Represented perception, unlike represented speech and thought, does not allow parentheticals with verbs of perception. Banfield (1977b : 9,1978: 303) argues that parentheticals occur only with representations of reflective consciousness and hence are excluded from represented perception. Parentheticals such as she saw can only have a metaphoric meaning (“she discovered”) and express reflective consciousness. Since represented perception can represent reflective consciousness, however, the lack of parentheticals may merely be a contingent fact that verbs of perception cannot take direct contexts, as can verbs of communication. 3.2. Unique linguistic markers of represented perception Much more pervasive than the syntactic markers of represented speech and thought is the occurrence in represented perception of the semantic features of the style. In represented perception, however, the set of lexical items which convey the character’s “judgmental or epistemic meaning” is much larger than in represented speech and thought; it includes adjectives, both predicate and prenominal, verbs, and verbals. Although the semantic features of these lexical items are difficult to define precisely, they always express something more than is required for simple description. They express a character’s evaluation, assessment, characterization, or opinion of the world about him. Evaluative or subjective adjectives abound in represented perception. Just in passage (2) one sees “soft, quick steps and running voices” (e), “muffled thud” (f), “long, chuckling, absum! sound” (g), ‘little, faint winds” (k), “two tiny spots” (l), or “a warm little silver star” (p). Other examples of such adjectives include the following: “‘mean-little cottages” and “charming girl” (Mansfield), “chocolate train”, “laborious drone”, “‘shrill twofold note”, and “uplifted cathedral” (Joyce), “Glistening reds”, “vastFrpping sheet “, and “gigantic chaos” (Woolf). the verbs and verbals in represented perception also have an emotiveness and expressiveness not found in pure narration: “sprawled”, “gleamed”, “blazed”, “ruffling”, and “playing chase” (Mansfield), “clacking”, “whirring”, and “flecked” (Joyce), “seeping”, “sparkling”, and “shot out” (Cary), “streaked”, “wallowing”, “sliced”, “rippling”, and “freshening” (Woolf) and “reeling” (Lawrence). One verb which by itself is almost always a sign of represented perception because of its essential link with a subject of consciousness

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is seem. Something must “seem” to someone; it cannot just “seem”. Thus, in (2)d, all the doors must seem open to Laura 181. The expressive quality in narrative descriptions is, of course, usually attributable to the author, and the characteristic lexical items are part of the author’s style. In passages of represented perception, however, the expressive quality issues from the character; the emotions, judgments, or beliefs expressed in various lexical items are the character’s, not the author’s. For example, in passage (2), characterizations such as “chuckling, absurd sound” or “darlinglittle spots” clearly belong to the character, not Katherine Mansfield. In a very interesting discussion of represented perception in Flaubert, Pascal (1977: 105-12) points out in certain descriptions a flaw which he calls “narrational usurpation”, but which might better be called “authorial usurpation”. Because of his love of style, Flaubert occasionally allows his language and perspective to supplant those of a character in passages which otherwise purport to represent a character’s vision and attittude. Hence, Flaubert distorts the subjective quality of these passages. 3.3. The reflective and unreflective nature of represented perception Those who have written about represented perception seem to agree that it expresses a character’s unreflective consciousness (e.g., Bowling 1950: 342; Auerbath 1974: 484; Biihler 1937: 153-4). Fehr states his opinion succinctly: “With substitutionary perception, however, we are under the illusion of receiving a direct verbal replica of visions and auditions not yet affected by the stream of reflection” (1938: 102) [9]. In represented perception, the character’s mind is passive,accepting new impressions from outside, not actively reflecting on these impressions. The following example from Virginia Woolf is represented perception overtly marked as spontaneous: (15) She looked down the railway carriage, the omnibus; took a line from shoulder or cheek; looked at the windows opposite; at Piccadilly, lamp-strung in the evening . . . But always something - it might be a face, a voice, a paper boy crying Standard News - thrust through, snubbed her, waked her, required and got in the end an effort of attention, so that the vision must be perpetually remade. (Woolf 1970: 206) More often, however, passages of represented

perception

give evidence of reflec-

[8] Filhnore (1974: 16) points out that in represented speech and thought, when the experience1 is not mentioned, all verbs denotiong psychological states and events must be interpreted from the point of view of the character. [9] Fehr (1938: 103-4) believes that the unreflective quality of the consciousness represented in this style has a linguistic correspondence in “ataxis”, or the lack of syntactical nexus. Perceptions are flash-like reactions or clicks, and a hypotactic style seems to capture this sense of instantaneous response.

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tive consciousness. In the Mansfield passage (2), the represented perception is interrupted twice by represented speech and thought (i-j, m-n) concerning the perception, thoughts pointing to some sort of reflection on the perceiver’s part. In (2)j, the first half of the condition, “if you stopped to notice”, implies that the subject of consciousness has herself already stopped to notice, i.e., that she is reflective. Represented perception is marked as reflective in several other ways. Most often, it includes similes with Zike, as, and as if: (16) (a) One bird drifted high like a dark fleck in a jewel. (Mansfield 1971: 156) (b) He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot: a shrill twofold note. But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin . . . (Joyce 1968: 224) (c) So she looked over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind. (Woolf 1970: 79) The reflective nature of the consciousness can be overtly stated; in the following, the perceptions merge in the mind with reflective thoughts: (17) (a) And it seemed to her that kisses, voices, tinkling spoons, laughter, the smell of crushed grass were somehow inside her. (Mansfield 197 1: 84) (b) A smell of molten tallow came up from the dean’s candlebutts and fused itself in Stephen’s consciousness with the jingle of words, bucket and lamp and lamp and bucket. (Joyce 1969: 187) The character can be shown becoming reflective about a perception: (18) (a) With an effort she roused herself to see what it was that penetrated her consciousness. The tall white lilies were reeling in the moonlight . . . (Lawrence 196 1: 35) (b) - but what was she looking at? At a man pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals, lions, tigers . . . (Woolf 1970: 14) When the perceptions represented take on a non-literal value, they can only result from reflective consciousness. For two characters, the perceived scene or the heard sounds say a woman’s name: (19) (a) . . . the sky, the sailing bird, the water all said, “Isabel.” (Mansfield 1971: 156) (b) But still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name. (Joyce 1976: 117)

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Imagined represented

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perceptions

also result from reflective consciousness

[ 101:

(20) When he was on his way to meet Isabel there began those countless imaginary meetings. She was at the station, standing just a little apart from everybody else; she was sitting in the open taxi outside; she was at the garden gate; walking across the parched grass; at the door, or just inside the hall. (Mansfield 1971: 157) 3.4. The literaly function of represented perception The literary function of represented perception is much the same as that of represented speech and thought. It is a more mometic means of expressing a character’s perceptions than its only alternative in narration, indirect contexts; it allows the direct representation of perceptions with no implication of internal speech nor necessarily even conscious thought, It also necessitates no breaks in narration. The presence of represented perception can often disambiguate a preceding description of the outside world; it clearly identifies the passage as the perceptions of a subject of consciousness. Represented perception, therefore, successfully coalesces the external and Internal worlds: it promotes “eine gewisse Harmonie zwischen Aussen- und Innenwelt” (Biihler 1937: 154). It lends subjectivity to a sight, sound, or smell, for the external world is represented with the coloring which a character’s temperament and interests impart. This coloring has linguistic manifestation in the expressive adjectives and verbs of the style. In represented perception, in fact, the external world has existence only as sense perceptions in a character’s consciousness. McHale concludes that “descriptive details . . . serve no longer as residual signs of the ‘real,‘but as marks and measures of human consciousness. The notion of ‘substitutionary perception,’ in other words, is a principal strategy for organizing a text according to limited points ofview”(1978: 278) [ll]. Represented perception also lends vividness or immediacy to descriptions of the outside world. As with represented speech and thought, this vividness results from the co-temporality of the past tense and present deictics, but also from the vividness of the verbs and adjectives. The modifiers in this style are evaluative, poetic, at times even hyperbolic; exterior description would normally not allow this overblown style. As readers, we see and feel things along with the characters when represented perception is used, and we also grasp the subjective meanings which things carry for the characters. We need not, however, accept these subjective meanings, although, [lo] Fehr (1938: 105) and Bowling (1950: 342) comment upon the use of substitutionary perception for not only real scenes, but also remembered and imagined ones, dreams, and reveries. [ 111 Cohn (1978: 133), however, attributes to represented perception a diminished importance: its function seems “to be less to render a character’s consciousness than to narrate a fictional scene”.

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in cases other than imagined perceptions, we must accept the actual perception. In this respect, represented perception differs from represented speech and thought. Neither direct speech nor represented speech and thought need be trusted, whereas pure narration must be taken as the truth. Represented perception is half way between these extremes. A passage from Sinclair Lewis Babbif exemplifies this well: (21) The air of the bathroom (1950: 5)

was thick with the smell of heathen

Here, one must believe that the bathroom that it was heathenish.

smelled of toothpaste,

toothpaste.

but not necessarily

4. Conclusion Linguistically and functionally, therefore, represented perception bears strong similarities to represented speech and thought. Yet we have seen that in both respects represented perception is distinct from represented speech and thought. They form complementary parts of a larger narrative style. Much work needs to be done yet in the precise formulation of this style within the theory of narration, but I believe that the inclusion of represented perception is a step in the right direction. I might end in suggesting that despite the over-abundance of names, yet another name, perhaps ‘represented consciousness’, is needed.

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Luurel E&ton is an Associate Instructor in the English Department of the University of California, Berkeley, and doctoral candidate in the English Language Program. Her fields of interest include Old English, comparative Germanic linguistics, the history of English, and the structure of modern English, and her current research concerns the expression of verbal aspect in English. She is also the linguistic editor of Getting Along, an elementary English as a second language text, by D. Brinton and R. Neuman (forthcoming, Prentice Hall).