Speech in the English Novel PDF
Preview Speech in the English Novel
SPEECH IN THE ENGLISH NOVEL A /so by Norman Page THE LANGUAGE OF JANE AUSTEN THOMAS HARDY THOMAS HARDY: THE WRITER AND HIS BACKGROUND (editor) *THOMAS HARDY ANNUAL 1, 2, 3 and 4 (editor) *A. E. HOUSMAN: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY *A DICKENS COMPANION *A KIPLING COMPANION *A CONRAD COMPANION E. M. FORSTER'S POSTHUMOUS FICTION WILKIE COLLINS: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE (editor) NABOKOV: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE (editor) *D. H. LAWRENCE: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 vo/s) (editor) *TENNYSON: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (editor) *HENRY JAMES: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (editor) *BYRON: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIQNS (editor) *DICKENS: HARD TIMES, GREAT EXPECTATIONS AND OUR MUTUAL FRIEND (Casebook) (editor) *THE LANGUAGE OF LITERATURE (Casebook) (editor) *WILLIAM GOLDING: NOVELS, 1954-67 (Casebook) (editor) *Also published by Macmillan Speech in the English Novel Norman Page Professor of Modern English Literature University of Nottingham Second Edition pal grave macmillan © Norman Page 1973, 1988 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 1bis book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. First edition (Longman) 1973 Second edition (Macmillan) 1988 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Vine & Gorfin Ltd, Exmouth, Devon British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Page, Norman Speech in the English novel. - 2nd ed. I. English fiction - History and criticism 2. Dialogue I. Title 823' .009'26 PR826 ISBN 978-0-333-40872-8 ISBN 978-1-349-19047-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19047-8 To my wife Jean Contents Preface to the second edition ix Preface to the first edition X 1 Preliminary considerations 2 Methods of speech-presentation 25 3 Speech and character: dialect 55 4 Speech and character: idiolect 97 5 Some case-studies 122 6 Dickens and speech 142 Index 171 vii Acknowledgment Permission to reproduce copyright material has kindly been granted by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc, the author's literary estate, and the Hogarth Press, for an extract from Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. viii Preface to the second edition When, some twenty years ago, I began to make a serious study of fictional dialogue, I was surprised to find that it was a subject to which remarkably little systematic attention had been paid, particularly in relation to English-language texts. It seemed that, while everyone read novels, almost nobody had asked even the most fundamental questions concerning the nature and function of an element that provides so much pleasure and interest in many works of fiction. Since then, the prominence given to narrative in some influential schools of contem porary critical theory has resulted in the novel receiving a degree and intensity of attention unheard of a generation or two ago - a shift in critical orthodoxy or fashion to which additional impetus was given by a timely and inevitable reaction against the preoccupation of 'practical criticism' and 'the new criticism' with short poems. The language of fiction (and how significant it is that this comprehensive phrase was not appropriated as a book-title until David Lodge used it in 1966!) has become an intensely cultivated area of enquiry; and dialogue has often been of peculiar interest, not only because of its literary importance and interest, but also on account of the compromises it resorts to between the language of everyday speech and a specifically literary discourse. To pursue such a question is to confront not only literary issues but the nature of speech itself. Readers in many parts of the world have generously said that they have found the original version of this book helpful as a stimulus to their own tbinking on this complex and fascinating topic, and in this new edition its general argument and structure have been left largely unchanged. I have, however, taken the opportunity of its reissue to revise numerous points of detail, to include additional examples that have come to my attention in the past dozen years, and to enlarge the bibliographies. I am grateful to those reviewers and readers who have pointed out errors or made suggestions for improvement, and especially to Seymour Chatman, David Lodge, Sylvere Monod, K. M. Petyt and Johannes Soderlind. I hope that, without pretending to say the last word on a subject that has benefited from the greatly increased sophistication of literary and linguistic studies in recent years - and that is in any case of almost endless scope - this book may prove useful to a new generation of students and teachers. University of Nottingham November 1985 NP ix Preface to the first edition Praise or criticism of the dialogue of novels has traditionally been too often based on impression rather than analysis, and easily contented with such shorthand verdicts as the 'brilliance' ofJane Austen's conversation or the 'stilted' quality of much of Sir Walter Scott's. This book sets out to raise some fundamental questions concerning the nature of speech in fiction and its relationship to real-life talk, and to describe the major problems facing the writer of dialogue and some of the ways in which they may be overcome. It also takes a close look at samples of the dialogue of a wide variety of novelists writing in the English language. My plan has been in the first four chapters to approach the subject of fictional dialogue from the general and theoretical standpoint, and in the fifth and sixth chapters to focus attention on selected novels and novelists. I have not hesitated, however, to draw freely at all times on a wide variety of literary material drawn from several countries and more than two centuries, in the belief that discussion of stylistic questions is likely to be most profitable when it is accompanied by the analysis of specific texts. The use of the novels of Dickens as a major source of exemplification throughout, and the decision to devote a chapter (6 ) to an extended examination of the role of speech in his work, may serve to impose a rough kind of unity on my eclectic choice of illustrative examples. This prominence given to a single author is explained partly by the fact that my interest in this aspect of language and style originated some years ago in the course of a detailed study of Dickens's work, but mainly by my conviction that he is, among English novelists, the supremely original and versatile exponent of dialogue writing. Part of Chapter 4 has already appeared in The Dickensian and is used here, in a slightly revised form, by kind permission of the editor, Dr Michael Slater. My grateful thanks are also due to Mr John Spencer of the University of Leeds for many valuable suggestions during the earlier stages of my investigation of this topic, and to Professor Randolph Quirk, general editor of the series, for his stimulating reactions to the initial drafts of this book. The extracts from Galt and Alexander quoted in Chapter 3 were brought to my attention by my colleague Dr Raymond Grant. In all notes and references the place of publication is London unless otherwise indicated. University of Alberta January 1973 NP X
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