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Point of View in Fiction: The Development of a Critical Concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Norman Friedman*
Affiliation:
University or Connecticut, Storrs

Abstract

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Type
Notes, Documents, and Critical Comment
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 5 , December 1955 , pp. 1160 - 1184
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

page 1160 note 1 Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928), Ch. xxii; Beach, The Twentieth Century Novel: Studies in Technique (New York and London, 1932), p. 14; Booth, “Form and Technique in the Novel,” The Reinlerpretation of Victorian Literature, ed. Joseph E. Baker (Princeton, 1950), p. 79.

page 1160 note 2 Beach, ibid., pp. 15–16; Schorer, “Technique as Discovery,” Essays in Modern Literary Criticism, ed. Ray B. West, Jr. (New York and Toronto, 1952), pp. 190–191 (reprinted from the Hudson Review, 1948).

page 1160 note 3 The Republic (Plato died 347 b.c.), iii, 392–394. For some representative high spots in the history of aesthetics and criticism regarding this distinction, see the following: Aristotle, Rhetoric (ca. 330 b.c.), iii, xi, 2–4; Quintiliàn, Institutes (fr. ca. a.d. 88), iv, ii, 63; vi, ii, 28–34; viii, iii, 61–62; Sidney, An Apology for Poetry (ca. 1583, printed 1595), in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (London, 1904), i, 201; John Hoskihs, Directions for Speech and Style (ca. 1600), ed. Hoyt H. Hudson (Princeton, 1935), p. 42; Bacon, De Augmenlis (1623), v, v; Dryden, “A Letter to the Honorable Sir Robert Howard,” prefacing Annus Mirabilis (1666); Alexander Gerard, Essay on Taste (London, 1759), Part m, Sec. vi, pp. 197–198, and Essay on Genius (London, 1774), Part n, Sec. iii, pp. 169–174; Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism (Edinburgh, 1762), Ch. xvii, pp. 483–484 (cf. Mihail M. Morozov, “The Individualization of Shakespeare's Characters through Imagery,” Shakespeare Survey 2, Cambridge, Eng., 1949, pp. 83–106); Coleridge, “Shakespeare as a Poet Generally,” first published 1836, but probably delivered as a lecture in 1818, or even 1808; Keats, Letter to Bailey, Sat., 22 Nov. 1817, Letter to George and Thomas Keats, Sun., 21 Dec. 1817; Hazlitt, “On Shakespeare and Milton,” Lecture ii, Lectures on the English Poets (1818); Arnold, preface to Poems, 1853 ed.; Meredith, Letter to Miss J- H-, 22 Nov. 1864, Letters of George Meredith, coll. and ed. by his son (New York, 1912), i, 163.

I am indebted to my colleague, Mr. Charles A, McLaughlin, for calling my attention to the first 7 of these references.

page 1160 note 4 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (dated Dublin 1904, Trieste 1914, published 1916), middle of Ch. v. Cf. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1917), “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919). For technical discussion of “aesthetic distance” see Melvin Rader, A Modern Book of Aesthetics, rev. ed. (New York, 1952), pp. 381–465, where the work of Munsterberg, Bullough, Ortega y Gasset, Worringer, and Vernon Lee is presented and discussed.

page 1160 note 5 The Writing of Fiction (New York and London, 1925), pp. 43 ff.

page 1160 note 6 The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces, ed. R. P. Blackmur (New York and London, 1934), pp. 37–38, 300.

page 1160 note 7 The Method of Henry James (New Haven, 1918), pp. 56–71.

page 1160 note 8 The Craft of Fiction (New York, 1921), pp. 62, 66–67, 71–72, 139–143.

page 1160 note 9 See, e.g., the remarks of MacKenzie, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Scott, in Novelists on Novels, ed. R. Brimley Johnson (London, 1928), pp. 13, 25, 41–45, 58–59, 94, 173, 180–184, 199–200; of Thackeray and de Maupassant in The Writer's Art, ed. Rollo Walter Brown (Cambridge, Mass., 1921), pp. 202–204, 271; Nassau William Senior, Essays on Fiction (London, 1864—written 1821–57), pp. 189 ff., 349–351, 391–392; Sidney Lanier, The English Novel, Centennial Ed., Vol. iv, eds. Clarence Gohdes and Kemp Malone (Baltimore, 1945), pp. 22, 172–173, 190, 220–222; Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction (Boston, 1885—a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution in 1884), p. 3; Henry James, The Art of Fiction and Other Essays, ed. Morris Roberts (New York, 1948), pp. 4–6; cf. “A Humble Remonstrance” (1884), by R. L. Stevenson; Daniel Greenleaf Thompson, The Philosophy of Fiction in Literature (London and New York, 1890), pp. 211–212; William Dean Howells, Criticism in Fiction (New York, 1891), pp. 19–21,75–76; Brander Matthews, Aspects of Fiction (New York, 1896), pp. 185–186, 198–199, 223, 234; Bliss Perry, A Study of Prose Fiction (Boston, 1902), pp. 48–72; Frank Norris, The Responsibilities of the Novelist (New York, 1903), pp. 27–28, 206, 246.

page 1160 note 10 Boston, 1905, pp. 15–21, 31–38,49 ff., 66–72,101; cf. Evelyn May Albright, The Short-Story (New York, 1907), pp. 54–55, 66–70.

page 1160 note 11 Clayton Hamilton, Materials and Methods of Fiction (New York, 1908—reprinted as A Manual of the Art of Fiction in 1918), pp. 120–138; Charles F. Home, The Technique of the Novel (New York and London, 1908), pp. v, 243–263; J. Berg Esenwein, Writing the Short-Story (Springfield, Mass., 1909), pp. 109–124; Walter B. Pitkin, The Art and Business of Story Writing (New York, 1912), pp. 174–187; Carl H. Grabo, The Art of the Short Story (New York, 1913), pp. 21–36, 159; Ethan Allen Cross, The Short Story (Chicago, 1914), pp. 80–86; Harry T. Baker, The Contemporary Short Story (New York, 1916), pp. 52, 111–112; Blanche Colton Williams, A Handbook on Story Writing (New York, 1917 [2nd ed. rev. 1930]), pp. 129–166; Henry Burrowes Lathrop, The Art of the Novelist (London, 1921), pp. 252–282.

page 1160 note 12 Wharton, pp. 11–16, 43–46, 70–75, 86–95; Glenn Clark, A Manual of the Short Story Art (New York, 1922), pp. 89–95; Elizabeth A. Drew, The Modern Novel (New York, 1926), pp. 246–262; Michael Joseph, How to Write a Short Story (New York, 1926), pp. 47–56.

page 1160 note 13 Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1927), pp. 118–128. Cf. Grant Overton, The Philosophy of Fiction (New York, 1928), pp. 59, 131–135; Carl H. Grabo, The Technique of the Novel (New York, 1928), pp. 65, 81; Van Meter Ames, Aesthetics of the Novel (Chicago, 1928), pp. 177–193; Stewart Beach, Short-Story Technique (Boston, 1929), pp. 4–13, 103–120, 136–158; Mary Burchard Orvis, Short Story Writing (New York, 1928), pp. 111–121; Edith Mirrielees, Writing the Short Story (New York, 1929), pp. 81–121; John Gallishaw, Twenty Problems of the Fiction Writer (New York and London, 1929), pp. vii–x, 88–167.

page 1160 note 11 The Twentieth Century Novel (New York and London, 1932), p. 15, et passim. Cf. Ford Madox Ford, “Techniques,” Southern Review, i (1935), 20–35; Gordon Hall Gerould, How to Read Fiction (Princeton, 1937), pp. 54–55, 66–67, 71–73; Douglas Bement, Weaving the Short Story (New York, 1931), pp. 169–173; John T. Frederick, A Handbook of Short Story Writing, rev. ed. (New York, 1932), pp. 34–35; Thomas H. Uzzell, Narrative Technique, 3rd ed. (New York, 1934), pp. 410–437, and “New Techniques in the Novel,” English Journal, xxiv (1935), 355–363; Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, The Writing of Fiction (Boston, 1934), pp. 69, 317–367; James Weber Linn and Houghton Wells Taylor, Foreword to Fiction (New York and London, 1935), pp. 27–45, 57–60; Edward J. O'Brien, The Short Story Case Book (New York, 1935), pp. 13–32.

page 1160 note 15 Tate, “The Post of Observation in Fiction,” Maryland Quart., ii (1944), 61–64; Bent-ley, Some Observations on the Art of Narrative (New York, 1947), pp. 35–39.

page 1160 note 16 Glasgow, A Certain Measure (New York, 1943), pp. 18–19, 41–43, 70, 99, 114, 150,168, 180–183, 189–192; Schorer, “Technique as Discovery,” loc. cit. Cf. W. H. Rogers, “Form in the Art-Novel,” Helicon, ii (1939), 1–17; DeVoto, “The Invisible Novelist,” The World of Fiction (Boston, 1950), pp. 205–228; Arthur E. Dubois, “The Art of Fiction,” South Atlantic Quart., xl (1941), 112–122; Cleanth Brooks and R. P. Warren, Understanding Fiction (New York and London, 1943), pp. 588–596; William Foster-Harris, The Basic Formulas of Fiction (Norman, Okla., 1944), pp. 22–53; A. L. Baber, “The Structure of the Modern Short Story,” College English, vii (1945), 86–92; Elizabeth Bowen, “Notes on Writing a Novel” (1945), Collected Impressions (New York, 1950), pp. 249–263; Kenneth Payson Kempton, The Short Story (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), pp. 82–145; Dorothy Mc-Cleary, Creative Fiction Writing (Boston, 1947), pp. 61–69, 70–85, 99–104; Mary Burchard Orvis, The Art of Writing Fiction (New York, 1948), pp. 70–91, 113–133, 135–151; Alex Comfort, The Novel and Our Time (Denver, 1948), pp. 33–43; Richard Summers, Craft of the Short Story (New York and Toronto, 1948), pp. 47–48; René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York, 1949), pp. 223–234; Brooks and Warren, Fundamentals of Good Writing (New York, 1949), pp. 267–288; Manuel Komroff, How to Write a Novel (New York and Boston, 1950), pp. 62–95; Mark Schorer, The Story: A Critical Anthology (New York, 1950), pp. 16–17, 65; Fred B. Millet, Reading Fiction (New York, 1950), pp. 14–25; Vincent McHugh, Primer of the Novel (New York, 1950), pp. 4, 16, 113–124; Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate, The House of Fiction (New York, 1950), pp. 621–634; A. A. Mendilow, Time and the Novel (London, 1952), pp. 96–115; Francis Connolly, A Rhetoric Case Book (New York, 1953), pp. 588–589.

page 1160 note 17 Franklin, Autobiography (fr. 1793 on, Franklin died in 1790); Butler, first published posthumously in 1903 (Butler died in 1902, but ceased work on this novel in 1884).

page 1160 note 18 “The Three-Day Blow,” from In our Time (1925).

page 1160 note 19 End of Ch. vm (1925). Italics mine.

page 1160 note 20 One may speculate, if he wishes, as to the relation between the “I” as Witness frame in fiction and the convention of the messenger in Greek drama. E.g., the re-telling of the catastrophe at the end of Oedipus Rex or Oedipus at Colonus by an eye-witness.

page 1160 note 21 There is an intermediary category, albeit a minor one, to be mentioned here. It is characterized by the fact that, although the protagonist tells his own story, he tells it not to the reader but rather to someone of his acquaintance who thereupon relays it to the reader in his own person. Something of a combination “I” as Witness and “I” as Protagonist frame.

page 1160 note 22 Harbrace Modem Classics ed. (1927), pp. 13–14. Italics mine.

page 1160 note 23 Ibid., p. 154. Roman Fernandez, in Messages (1926), trans, from the French by Montgomery Belgion (New York, 1927), makes a very keen distinction, apparently independently, between the “novel” (showing) and the “recital” (telling), pp. 61–69.

page 1160 note 24 End of Ch. iii (1916). I am in fundamental agreement with Ellsworth Mason, who maintains that the Joyce canon is “dramatic” from beginning to end, displaying no progression from “lyric” to “epic” to “drama,” as has commonly been supposed. See “Joyce's Categories,” Sewanee Review, lxi (1953), 427–432.

page 1160 note 25 Cf. Louis Hasley, “The Stream-of-Consciousness Method,” Catholic World, cxlvi (1937), 210–213; Lawrence Bowling, “What is the Stream of Consciousness Technique?” PMLA, lxv (1950), 333–345; Robert Humphrey, “ ‘Stream of Consciousness’: Technique or Genre?” PQ, xxx (1951), 434–437. Bowling makes a very useful distinction between mental analysis, interior monologue, and stream of consciousness; the latter two represent the more and the less articulate manner of directly rendering internal states, the first the indirect omniscient manner. See also Gleb Struve, “Monologue Interieur: The Origins of the Formula and the First Statement of its Possibilities,” PMLA, lxix (1954), 1101–11; and Robert Humphrey, Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel, Perspectives in Criticism: 3 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954)—both of which appeared after this article was completed.

page 1160 note 26 For a discussion of the reverse of this problem, see Herman M. Weisman, “An Investigation of Methods and Techniques in the Dramatization of Fiction,” Speech Monographs, xix (1952), 48–59.

page 1160 note 27 Tolstoy is reported to have recorded camera-style, as his first attempt at authorship in March 1851, everything that he saw and felt for one day. Cf. Prince D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1934 [1927]), pp. 329–330; and Janko Lavrin, Tolstoy: An Approach (London, 1944), p. 21. It is called The History [or An Account] of Yesterday, but I have not been able to obtain a copy.

page 1160 note 28 Booth, pp. 94–96; Beach, Twentieth Century Novel, pp. 15–16. Booth informs me that his stand in this matter has since undergone some modification.

page 1160 note 29 See, e.g., Aristotle's Poetics, 1460° 5: “Homer, admirable as he is in every other respect, is especially so in this, that he alone among epic poets is not unaware of the part to be played by the poet himself in the poem. The poet should say very little in propria persona, as he is no imitator when doing that. Whereas the other poets are perpetually coming forward in person, and say but little, and that only here and there, as imitators, Homer after a brief preface brings in forthwith a man, or woman, or some other Character—no one of them characterless, but each with distinctive characteristics” (Bywater trans.).

page 1160 note 30 I have in mind here, for example, the obvious inconsistencies in the narrative of Don Quixote as well as the often burdensome references to Cid Hamet, the author of the “original” MS. (cf. Wayne C. Booth, “The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction before Tristram Shandy,” PMLA, lxvii [1952], 163–185); or Melville's continual bursting of his original witness-narrator frame in Moby Dick; or the frequent absurdities engendered in the course of the narrative by Richardson's epistolary technique in Pamela; or the curiously split structure of Moll Flanders; or the excesses and lapses in emphasis in Wolfe's bulky novels (cf. n. 32 below).

page 1160 note 31 Schorer, “Technique as Discovery,” op. cit., pp. 197–198; Lawrence (1913), Modern Library Edition, p. 269.

page 1160 note 32 Trilling, Introd. to The Portable D. H. Lawrence (New York, 1947), pp. 19–20;Lawrence, quoted in the same place; E. T., D. B. Lawrence: A Personal Record (London, 1935), pp. 201–204. For another interesting firsthand account of the problem of objectivity in fiction, see Thomas Wolfe's The Story of a Novel (1936): “The nature of my method, the desire fully to explore my material had led me into another error. The whole effect of those five years of incessant writing had been to make me feel not only that everything had to be used, but that everything had to be told, that nothing could be implied.” Penguin ed. of Wolfe's short stories (New York, 1947 [variously entitled Short Stories and Only the Dead Know Brooklyn]), pp. 117–118, 146.

page 1160 note 33 Merton, The Seven Storey Mountian, Signet ed. (New York, 1952 [1948]), pp. 255–256; Gordon, “Some Readings and Misreadings,” Sewanee Rev., lxi (1953), 384–407.