Norman Friedman - Point of View in Fiction: The Development of a Critical Concept [2]

II. 

1168)  the questions must be something like the following: 1) Who talks to the reader? (author in third or first person, character in first, or ostensibly no one); 2) From what position (angle) regarding the story does he tell it? (above, periphery, center, front, or shifting); 3) What channels of information does the narrator use to convey the story to the reader? (author's words, thoughts, perceptions, feelings; or character's words and actions; or character's thoughts, perceptions, and feelings: through which of these or combination of these three possible media does information regarding mental states, setting, situation, and character come?); and 4) At what distance does he place the reader from the story? (near, far, or shifting). And since, further, our major distinc- tion is between "telling" and "showing," the sequence of our answers should proceed by degrees from the one extreme to the other: from state- ment to inference, from exposition to presentation, from narrative to drama, from explicit to implicit, from idea to image.

Editorial Omniscience

1169) summary narrative is a generalized account or report of a series of events covering some extended period and a variety of locales, and seems to be the normal untutored mode of storytelling; im- mediate scene emerges as soon as the specific, continuous, and successive details of time, place, action, character, and dialogue begin to appear. Not dialogue alone but concrete detail within a specific time-place frame is the sine qua non of scene.

[summary - Samuel Butler- The Way of All Flesh/ immdiate - Hemingway - Nick]

1171) Here "omniscience" signifies literally a completely unlimited-and hence difficult to control-point of view. The story may be seen from any or all angles at will: from a godlike vantage point beyond time and place, from the center, the periphery, or front. There is nothing to keep the author from choosing any of them, or from shifting from one the other as often or rarely as he pleases. 

- The characteristic mark, then, of torial Omniscience is the presence of authorial intrusions and generaliza- tions about life, manners, and morals, which may or may not be explic- itly related to the story at hand. Thus, for example, Fielding in Tom Jones and Tolstoy in War and Peace have interpolated their essays separate chapters within the body of the work, and hence they are easily detachable. Hardy, on the other hand, makes no such formal distinction, commenting here and there in the midst of the action as he sees fit.

Neutral Omniscience

1172) 예 Huxley - Point Counter Point

1174) The prevailing characteristic of omniscience, however, is that the author is always ready to intervene himself between the reader and the story, and that even when he does set a scene, he will render it as he sees it rather thajn as his people see it. 

"I" as Witness

1174) 작가는 모습을 감춤.

- The natural consequence of this narrative frame is that the witness has no more than ordinary access to the mental states of others; its tinguishing characteristic, then, is that the author has surrendered omniscience altogether regarding all the other characters involved, has chosen to allow his witness to tell the reader only what he as observer may legitimately discover.

- What the witness may legitimately transmit to the reader is not restricted as may at first appear: he can talk to the various people within the story and can get their views on matters of concern (notice how care- fully Conrad and Fitzgerald have troubled to characterize Marlow and Carraway as men in whom others feel compelled to confidede)

 "I" as Protagonist

Multiple Selective Omniscience

Selective Omniscience

1177) on: Henry James, staying on the "upper" levels of his characters' minds, which are usually of the highly articulate type anyway, cannot be called a "stream-of-consciousness" writer. Woolf, who might be said to dwell on the "middle" level of her characters' minds (which are characteristically chaste), and Joyce, who knows no bottom, are correspondingly more difficult.

The Dramatic Mode

The Camera

III

1180)  Editorial Omniscience, for example, may be called the "free verse" of fiction: its limits are so wholly internal that an unwary novelist has more opportunities for illusionon-breaking here than with the others.

1181) when the personality of the author-narrator has a definite function to fulfill in relation to his story-say of irony, compassion, philosophical range and depth, and so on-he need not retire behind his work, so long as his point of view is adequately established and coherently maintained.

- Thus, if it is essential to an author's purpose that the minds of many be revealed freely and at will-to achieve, for example, the effect of a social milieu in the manner of Huxley-and if the author's superior and explanatory tone is to dominate the perception and awareness of his characters-to achieve that typical Huxleyan effect of smallness and futility and indignity-then Neutral Omniscience is the logical choice. If the element of suspense is to be foremost-as, say, in mystery stories and detective fiction-if a situation is to be gradually built up and re vealed piecemeal-as, for example, in Lord Jim-then the witness-narra tor seems more likely than any other. If the problem is one of tracing the growth of a personality as it reacts to experience, the protagonist-nar rator will prove most useful-as in Great Expectations-assuming that he has sufficient sensitivity and intelligence to develop and to perceive the significance of that development (a naive protagonist may, of course, be used for an ironic effect).t). If the author is concerned with the way in which personality and experience emerge as a mosaic from their impinge ment upon the sensibilities of several individuals, then Multiple Selective Omniscience provides a way-as in To the Lighthouse. If the intent is to catch a mind in a moment of discovery-as in A Portrait of the Artist Selective Omniscience is the means. And finally, if the author's purpose is to produce in the reader's mind a moment of revelation-as in Hem ingway's Hills Like White Elephants-then the Dramatic Mode, with its tendency to imply more than it states, provides the logical approach.

1184) when an author surrenders in fiction, he does so in order to conquer; he gives up certain privileges and imposes certain limits in order the more effectively to render his story illusion, which constitutes artistic truth in fiction. And it is in the service of this truth that he spends his creative life.
 

 [정리]

현재는 더 이상 이런 식의 구분에 초점을 맞추어 소설을 분석하지는 않지만, 글을 쓰거나 읽을 때 작가가 어떤 시점으로 글을 써야 할지, 또 그것을 파악하고 읽는 것은 상당히 중요한 부분이다. [진보]와 [어둠]의 시점의 차이는 두 작품에 큰 차이를 가져왔고, 저자와 화자 사이의 거리의 문제를 좀 더 생각해 보기 위해 이 글을 읽었는데, 별다른 도움은 되지 않았다.