Table Of ContentNEW READINGS OF
THE AMERICAN NOVEL
Narrative Theory and its Application
NEW READINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN NOVEL
Narrative Theory and its Application
Peter Messent
Macmillan Education
ISBN 978-0-333-43797-1 ISBN 978-1-349-21117-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21117-3
©Peter Messent 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-43796-4
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-04653-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Messent, Peter B.
New readings of the American novel : narrative theory and its
application I Peter Messent.
p. em.
ISBN 978-0-312-04653-8
I. American fiction-History and criticism. 2. Narration
(Rhetoric) I. Title.
PS37l.M47 1990
813.009-dc20 90--8042
CIP
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 Speech Representation, Focalization and
Narration in The Great Gatsby 8
2 Time and Narrative: Faulkner's
Tlu! Sound and the Fury 44
3 Slippery Stuff: The Construction of
Character in The Sun Also Rises 86
4 The Dynamics of Reading: A Lost Lady 130
5 The Portrait of a Lady and The House
of Mirth: A Barthesian Reading 162
6 The Clash of Language: Bakhtin and
Huckleberry Finn 204
7 A Medley ofVoices: Zora Neale Hurston's
Their Eyes Were Watching God 243
Notes 288
Index 321
v
Acknowledgements
My interest in some of the materials developed here was first
raised within the University of Nottingham Critical Theory
Group. I would like to thank friends and colleagues within that
group who offered helpful comments on individual sections
of my manuscript: most especially - Elizabeth Boa, Diane
Knight, Elaine Millard, and Douglas Tallack. I tested out some
of the critical approaches represented here with my students.
My thanks for their patience, cooperation, and ideas. Gavin
Cologne-Brookes, working under my supervision toward his
Ph.D. on William Styron's novels, discussed Bakhtin with me
at length. I hope our conversations were as useful to him as
they were to me.
My special thanks to two colleagues from my department
whose help has been even more substantial. Richard King
was ever-willing to read chapters and part-chapters for me
in draft form. His good advice and warm encouragement
were invaluable. So, too, were David Murray's. He read both
separate sections of the book as I was proceeding, then the
complete text at manuscript stage, and his comments were
always incisive, always constructive. I consider myself privi
leged to have such colleagues and friends. With the help of
all those named above, this book is much better than it would
otherwise have been.
I also wish to thank Caroline Egar and Moira Eminton for
the concern and care which she brought to this project; and
Freda Duckitt, our departmental secretary, whose speed and
accuracy in typing the book, despite other tasks at hand,
was greatly appreciated. John Clements, the best of friends,
provided the basketball, bourbon and good talk which gave
vi
Acknowledgements vii
much needed temporary relief in the throes of writing. William
and Alice, my children, always special, showed real interest in
what I was doing; both encouraged me and put up without
complaint as I retreated yet again to work on this manuscript.
My love to them. And also, of course, to Penny Craig to whom
I owe a thousand thanks.
April, 1989
The author and publishers wish to thank the following
who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright
material: Basil Blackwell Ltd. for extracts from Narrative Dis
course by Gerard Genette, 1986; The Bodley Head and Charles
Scribner's Sons, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company
for extracts from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Copy
right© 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons; copyright renewed
1953 by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan; Georges Borchardt,
Inc. and Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
Inc. for extracts from S/Z: An Essay by Roland Barthes.
Translation copyright © 1974 by Farrar Straus & Giroux,
Inc; Curtis Brown Ltd. and Random House, Inc. for extracts
from The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. Copyright ©
1929 and renewed 1957 by William Faulkner; Harper & Row,
Publishers, Inc. for extracts from Mules and Men by Zora Neale
Hurston. Copyright© 1935 by Zora Neale Hurston; renewed
1963 by John C. Hurston; W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. for
extracts from The Portrait rif a Lady by Henry James, A Norton
Critical Edition, ed. Robert D. Bamberg. Copyright© 1975
by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc; Charles Scribner's Sons,
an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company, for extracts
from The Sun Also Rises By Ernest Hemingway. Copyright ©
1926 by Charles Scribner's Sons; copyright© renewed 1953
by Ernest Hemingway; University of Texas Press for extracts
from The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin,
edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and
Michael Holquist © 1981; Virago Press Ltd. and Harper &
Row, Publishers, Inc. for extracts from Their Eyes Were Watching
Godby Zora Neale Hurston. Copyright© 1935 by Zora Neale
Hurston; renewed 1965 by John C. andJoel Hurston; and with
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for extracts from A Lost Lady by Willa
Cather. Copyright© 1923 by Willa S. Cather; renewed 1951
viii New Readings of the American Novel
by Edith Lewis, Executrix and City Bank Farmers Trust Co.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders,
but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers
will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first
opportunity.
To My Parents
John and Rosa Messent
with all my love
Introduction
The book that follows will provide an introduction to a
variety of theoretical models for the reading of narrative. I
will apply these models to seven American novels to show
how they work in practice. My intention in so doing is to
present those who compose my audience with a series of
textually informed readings which will then be available for
them to negotiate to suit their own critical needs.
These are the bare bones of my project and, set out like this,
my plans may sound both mechanical and over-ambitious. In
fact, I cannot hope, given the nature of my survey, to explain
all aspects of the critical approaches on which I base my study.
Neither can my treatment of my chosen texts be comprehen
sive. By design it will be partial. For while I will attempt to give
a clear and accessible explanation of my theoretical sources,
I will focus on those aspects which I find most immediately
useful in approaching the literary text and most helpful in
informing my own critical practice. I intend, therefore, in my
chapter on Bakhtin, to explain some of the critical terms he
uses, and to attempt to show their implications when applied
to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. I shall not try, however, to
provide a systematized version of a writer whose wide ranging
critical activity, marked by a type of 'internal incompletion'!
reflected in his own spiralling style, is built to resist such a
project. In my chapter on reader response, likewise, I will
not attempt to 'cover' what is a large and complex field.
I will rather concentrate on the two critics, Wolfgang Iser
and Stephen Mailloux, who allow me good critical access to
the novel I wish to discuss, Willa Cather's A Lost Lady. Such
tactics are highly selective.
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