Voice' in Narrative Text

7/17/2019 'Voice' in Narrative Text

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/voice-in-narrative-text 1/12

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA.

http://www.jstor.org

Modern Language ssociation

"Voice" in Narrative Texts: The Example of As I Lay DyingAuthor(s): Stephen M. RossSource: PMLA, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Mar., 1979), pp. 300-310Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461893

Accessed: 10-10-2015 18:56 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 196.21.233.64 on Sat, 10 Oct 2015 18:56:11 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla

http://www.jstor.org/stable/461893

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp






http://www.jstor.org/stable/461893

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla

http://www.jstor.org/



STEPHEN

M. ROSS

"Voice"

in

Narrative Texts:

The

Example

of

As I Lay Dying

JOHN

BARTH,

in Lost

in

the

Funhouse,

touches the

heart of the

problem

I want to

consider here

when he has his narrator

Menelaus

assert a

purely

vocal

identity:

"this

isn't the

voice of

Menelaus;

this

voice

is

Mene-

laus,

all

there is

of

him.

...

I am this

voice,

no

more."1

Barth

(or

is

it

Menelaus?)

reminds

us

that a story-its persons and places, its deeds

and

disappointments-may

be

nothing

more than

the voice that tells

it.

The

"person"

named

Menelaus

is to be discovered

only

"in" his

voice;

"he" has no

existence without

voice,

be-

fore or after

voice,

beyond

or behind voice.

Such

is

the nature of all

things

in fiction:

they

"exist"

only by

virtue

of discourse.

But Barth does not

have

Menelaus

say

"I

am

this

discourse,

no more." He

says

"voice,"

a

word

implying,

far more

strongly

than "dis-

course," singular human origin: a

voice

pre-

sumably

emanates

from

someone,

though

the

source

may

be hidden or unnamed. Persons

have

voices;

fictional

characters, narrators,

authors

(we

say)

have voices.

Barth

neatly

locates one

paradox

of verbal

representation:

in

narrative,

voice

creates,

and

is

logically prior

to,

person;

yet

Menelaus

(wearing

after

all

a

person's

name)

speaks

in

"his" voice.'

Such

play

should

prompt

us

to look

closely

at

"voice." What is the

status

of voice

in

narrative?

The word

crops up

often

in

critical

discourse,

but its

place

(not

to mention its

meaning)

is

uncertain.

Ordinary usage

connects

"voice" with

sound:

"sound,

or

the

whole

body

of

sounds

made or

produced

by

the vocal

organs

of man

...

vocal sound as

the

vehicle of human utterance

or

expression.":'

But

so

common

has

"voice"

become in

discussions of literature

that it is al-

ready finding

its

way

into

glossaries

of

literary

terms,

and

its

figurative

origins may

be

forgot-

ten.4

I

do not

wish to

contemplate

"voice"

by

col-

lecting samples

of its use in

criticism,

an exercise

that would take us

only

a

short

way

toward

understanding

all

that

the

concept implies.

In-

stead

I

want to

pry

loose some

cherished as-

sumptions

about fictional

"reality"

by applying

various

legitimate

uses

of

"voice"

to a

single

narrative

text,

Faulkner's

As

I

Lay

Dying.

We

will discover by doing this that "voice" can be a

valuable

"positive

lever"

in

analyzing

fiction and

in

examining

the bases of

our own

critical

dis-

course about

narrative.5'

The

fifty-nine

sections

of

Faulkner's

poly-

phonic

novel,

each

headed

by

the

name

of one of

the fifteen

first-person

narrators,

exhibit

a

strik-

ing

variance

in tone:

we

"hear"

the dialect

of

poor

white

Mississippi

farmers,

talk

by

small-

town

shopkeepers,

tense

and

fast-paced

narra-

tive,

richly

metaphoric

digression,

and

philo-

sophically charged speculation burdened by

Latinate

diction

and convoluted

syntax.

The

sections

range

in

length

from one

sentence

("My

mother

is

a

fish")

to ten

pages;

one

section

is a

numbered list

of

reasons

for

building

a coffin

"on the

bevel,"

another a

reminiscence

by

a rot-

ting

corpse.

In

the

hope

of

bringing

order to

this

cacoph-

ony,

let us

begin by

noting

two kinds

of voice

in

the novel. The first we can

call

mimetic

voice

because

it

derives

from

verbal

imitation

and

representation.

The

second

we

can label

textual

voice because it arises from certain functions of

the

physical

text

itself,

from the written discourse

exclusive of

represented speech

or

speakers.

I

Mimetic voice can

be examined

on three lev-

els

of

discourse,

levels

distinguished by

the

postulated origins

for

the

voice or

voices dis-

cerned:

dialogue

(characters'

speech

acts),

nar-

300






Stephen

M. Ross

rative

(storytelling

by

identifiable

narrators),

and authorial

discourse

(which

seems to

origi-

nate with

a

"speaker"

outside

the fictional

world).

As

discernible

in

dialogue,

mimetic voice

is,

simply

enough,

the "vehicle of human utterance

and

expression"

possessed by

fictional

charac-

ters

and heard

(or

at least

hearable)

by

other

characters.

In a

sentence

like

"'Where's Jewel?'

pa says,"

the

quotation

marks

and

speaker

iden-

tification

classify

"Where's

Jewel?" as

speech

uttered

by

a

person (pa)

possessing

a

voice.6

Speech

and

voice

"occur"

as

phenomena

repre-

sented

in the narrative.

This all

sounds

obvious,

but

exactly

how

we

should

regard

such

represented

speech

is

not

obvious. Gerard Genette argues, for example,

that direct

discourse

in

narrative

is not

represen-

tational.

Quoted

speech,

Genette

claims,

is

"per-

fect"

mimesis,

"completely

identical with

[the

character's] discourse";

but

perfect

mimesis

is

not

mimetic

since

it

is

"the

thing

itself":

"the

work of

re-presentation

is

nonexistent" because

discourses

by

characters

can be

reproduced

"lit-

erally."

Genette

draws this

analogy:

if

a

painter

were

to

glue

an

oyster

shell

onto his

canvas,

he

would

be

inserting

an

actuality

into an

imitative

medium; so too does direct speech "consist sim-

ply

of

interpolating

in

the middle

of

a

text

rep-

resenting

events another text

drawn

directly

from

these events."7

I

would

argue

in

exactly

the

opposite

direc-

tion,

that we must

recognize

the extent

to which

dialogue

in

narrative is

representational.

When

transcribed on

paper,

oral

speech

(be

it

fictitious

or

reported)

has been

turned

into

writing,

and is

thus

re-presented

to us

in

a

new

expressive

shape,

just

as

other

acts

and events

are

"pre-

sented anew." While

the

question

"Where's

Jewel?"

is

spoken

in the universe

of the

novel,

the

utterance

comes

to

the reader

only

as

a writ-

ten

imitation.

Writing,

even

of direct

discourse,

cannot

be reduced to recorded

speech,

for the

recording,

the

particular

articulation of

words,

is

itself

part

of the

narrative's aesthetic

work.

It is

similarly

incorrect

to assume

(as

Genette

ap-

parently

does)

that direct

discourse

can

dupli-

cate

perfectly

some ideal "content" of

an

orig-

inal

discourse,

a

content unaffected

by

its ma-

terial

embodiment.

On

the

contrary,

the textual

and narrativecontext for dialogue affects "what"

is said

just

as

the

placing

of

Genette's

oyster

shell-its

position

on the

canvas,

its

size

relative

to the

background,

its

texture and

color in rela-

tion to the

paint-transforms

that

"real" shell

into a

"re-presented"

shell.

A shell can

be used

to

represent

a shell

just

as discourse can be used

to

represent

discourse.

(In

epistolary

novels

we

might say

that

writing

is

used

to

represent

writ-

ing.)

The

"interpolation"

Genette

speaks

of

is a

crucial act

with

aesthetic

consequences,

an act

requiring

"the work of

re-presentation."

Dialogue,

then,

is

always

representational.

The

common

assumption

that

direct discourse

is

somehow

exempt

from the

manipulations

of

mimesis

is

in

need

of close

scrutiny.8

Words

spoken by

a character

have

frequently

been

re-

garded as more "real" than nonverbal phe-

nomena

represented

in the same

text;

quoted

speech possesses

a kind

of

epistemological

sanc-

tity,

a

"facticity"

seldom

challenged

even

in a

narrative that

places

all

other

represented

"reali-

ties" under

suspicion.

The

most

untrustworthy

narrator,

for

example,

is

assumed

to remain

a

faithful

recorder

of other characters'

speeches-

direct discourse

is,

in

fact,

often the

only

certain

occurrence

in a

story.

Its

reliability

warns

the

reader

of the narrator's

unreliability.9

Our

ex-

pectations about speech, in other words, tend to

dissimulate

the

artifice that

puts

it in written

narrative.

That

audible

speech

and

represented

"speech"

are

both verbal discourse

does,

of

course,

make the "work

of

re-presentation"

seem

easier

with

dialogue

than

with

other

types

of

mimesis;

writers

do not

exploit

the

same

tech-

niques

and conventions

to

produce

conversation

as

they

do

to

depict

a

gunfight,

say,

or

to de-

scribe

a sunset. But

the

representation

is

none-

theless

grounded

in convention. Readers share

expectations

about

represented

speech

that

range

from

knowledge

of the

"rules" of

punctu-

ating dialogue

to

acceptance

of

mannerisms

(like

phonetic spelling) unique

to

a

given

work,

and these conventions

are in

principle

as

open

to

manipulation

as

any

others.

Once

we

recognize

that

direct discourse

is

governed by

convention,

that

it

is

not

"natural,"

we are

better

able to

unmask

some

of

the ma-

neuvers behind which a narrative

like

As

I

Lay

Dying

can hide its own

play.

Quotation

marks,

to mention

only

one

example,

create

speech

(and imply voice) by fiat, merely by asserting

301






"Voice" in

Narrative Texts

that certain

words

are to be

regarded

as

having

been,

or

as

now

being, spoken; quotation

marks

pledge

a

"true"

rendering

of

just

these words

in

the same order as

spoken

at

some

time

by

the

person

identified

as

the

speaker.

Accustomed

as

we are to this

usage,

we should not

forget

that it

is

merely

a

convention:

we

expect

the words

in-

side

quotation

marks to be

truly

recorded,

but

we

can be

disappointed.

(Faulkner,

as

we shall

see

in a

moment,

plays upon

this

expectation.)

Until

roughly

the nineteenth

century, quotation

marks were

merely

citation

marks,

employed

ex-

clusively

for

quoting

another author's

written

words.10

The evolution

of the

practice

of mark-

ing

both

spoken

and

written discourse

with

the

same

sign-a

procedure

that lent to

reported

speech the verifiability of cited written passages

-may

be connected

by

more

than

temporal

coincidence

to

the advent of

the

realistic

novel

and its

supposed

rendering

of

an

"objective"

actuality.

Quoted

oral discourse

in

any

narrative

implies

mimetic

voice,

though

the

degree

of

imitation

can

vary considerably.

Since

the

early

nineteenth

century,

writers

have

tried,

with

ever

increasing

skill,

to

represent

the

sound

of

talking-not

the

"sound

waves,"

of

course,

but

the

inscribable

sounded differences among speakers. We "hear"

this

speech by

Anse Bundren:

"'Hit was

jest

one

thing

and

then

another' he

says.

'That

ere

corn me and the

boys

was aimin to

git up

with,

and

Dewey

Dell

a-taken

good

keer

of

her,

and

folks comin

in,

a-offerin

to

help

and

sich,

till I

jest thought

. .

.'"

(p.

43).

Such

idiomatic

prose,

with

its

visual

conventions

like

contrac-

tions,

phonetic

spelling,

and

the "a-"

in

"a-taken,"

with its

"fillers"

("that

ere

corn")

and

regionalisms,

does

seem to be a

highly

mimetic

attempt

to

record actual

speech.

But a

term like

"actual" seldom

explains

much about

As

I

Lay

Dying.

The

speech

appears

in a

section

narrated

by

Doc

Peabody.

When Anse is

quoted

in

other

sections his

dialect

"sounds"

and looks

quite

different:

"'She's counted

on

it,'

pa

says.

'She'll want to

start

right away.

I know her.

I

promised

her

I'd

keep

the

team here and

ready,

and

she's

counting

on

it'"

(p.

17).

Except

for

the

contractions,

there

is

little mimetic

rendering

in

this:

"g"

is

nqt

dropped

from

"ing";

no words

are

spelled phonetically.

What then is

the "real"

sound of Anse Bundren's

speech?

What is his

"real"

voice?

Does

his

"true"

discourse have

"hit" or

"it,"

"keer" or "care"?

We cannot

answer such

questions

at the level

of

dialogue

because all

the

talking

that

takes

place

within

the fictional world of

As

I

Lay

Dying

is

quoted by

characters in their

capacity

as

narrators. When

Anse

speaks

his

heaviest

dialect,

we

discover,

he is

always

being

quoted

by

a

"town"

person-Doc Peabody,

Mac-

Gowan,

or

Moseley.

When

quoted

by country

folk,

Anse's talk

exhibits fewer

signs

of the

vernacular. As

I

Lay Dying

seems

to

imitate not

how a character

sounds

but

how one

character

sounds to another: to

Peabody,

Anse

says

"hit"

and "keer" and

"sich";

whereas

to

Darl,

or

to

Vernon

Tull,

the

words are

"it,"

"care,"

and

"such" regardless of their phonetic properties,

perhaps

because Darl

and Tull

make the

sound

"hit,"

too. The "real" sound

of

Anse's

speech

would

seem to

depend

on

the

ear

of the lis-

tener.'1

We

might

expect,

then,

to

find

speech

consis-

tently

rendered

at

the narrative level.

Surely

we

would "hear" a character's

"true" voice

when

he

talks to us instead of

to

other characters.

Again,

however,

the novel disallows

a notion of

"true."

By

criteria

of

verisimilitude the narrative

dis-

course is inconsistent and implausible, so much

so

that Faulkner

has

been accused

of

botching

the

first-person

point

of

view,

or at the

very

least

of

turning

third

person

into

first

person

by

ar-

bitrarily

substituting

"I" for "he" or "she."

Critics

discover discourse

they

cannot believe:

Vardaman,

the littlest

Bundren,

speaks

of his

brother's horse as

"an

unrelated

scattering

of

components-snuffings

and

stampings;

smells

of

cooling

flesh

and

ammoniac

hair;

an illusion of

co-ordinated

whole

of

splotched

hide and

strong

bones within

which,

detached and secret and

familiar,

an

is

different

from

my

is"

(p.

55).

The

objection

raised

here is

very

simple.

Var-

daman

as

a

person

could

not

talk

this

way;

therefore he

is

poorly employed

as

a narrator.12

This

complaint

carries beneath

its surface

the

assumption

that

voice

must

be

an

index of

per-

sonal

identity.

Just as

direct

discourse

is

granted

closer

ties

to

"reality"

than other

discourse

in

a

text,

so

it

is

judged

more

rigorously

by

standards

of

plausibility.

It is assumed not

only

that a

voice

belongs

to

some

person

but

also that it is

in crucial

ways "appropriate"

to that

person-to

302






Stephen

M. Ross

his

or

her socioeconomic

class,

level

of educa-

tion,

and so on.

Any loosening

of the bond

between voice

and

person

violates verisimilitude

and "sounds

unnatural"

to the reader's

ear,

be-

cause the

reader has

accepted

the

representation

of that

person

as an

actuality.

Violations of

point

of

view,

of what we

can

plausibly

see,

dis-

gruntle

commentators

on

As I

Lay

Dying

less

than do violations of voice.

Darl Bundren's

clairvoyance

(he

narrates a number

of events he

could not

possibly

observe)

and

Addie's

post-

humous reminiscence

are less bothersome

than

Vardaman's

description

of the horse

because

Darl

and

Addie

"sound"

natural-natural,

that

is,

to the

person

constituted

by

our

reading.13

As

I

Lay

Dying

forces us

to remove

the

hy-

phen from "character-narrator" and maintain

the

distinction

between

kinds of

persona.

Al-

though

Vardaman

is

represented

as a

character

in

his

and in

others'

narrative

sections,

as a

nar-

rator he

is his

voice

and

nothing

more.

He is

never

depicted

narrating,

since

the novel

con-

tains

no

storytelling

scenes.

When

we

try

to

describe

or to

judge

Vardaman as

a

narrator,

we

are

inescapably caught

in

the

paradox

John

Barth's

Menelaus

opened

to

us,

the

paradox

we

can

rephrase

as "this

isn't

the voice of Varda-

man; this voice is Vardaman, all there is of

him." We cannot

solve

the

paradox

by invoking

some unwritten rule

of

"expressive identity" by

which

person

and

voice must

correspond,

be-

cause as

a

narrator

Vardaman

(and

all

the

nov-

el's narrative

personae) emerges

from his

voice:

voice,

that

is,

constitutes the

person

we want to

say

voice must be

appropriate

to.

(The

critics

of

Faulkner's

method

seem

willing,

somewhat in-

consistently,

to

allow

Darl

his

highly

sophisti-

cated diction

because he

uses

it

in

all

his sec-

tions,

even

though

as

a character he

does not

deserve

any greater

tolerance than Vardaman.

Darl also is

his

voice,

but

presumably

we

are

to

grant

him

his voice

as

if he

did exist

beyond

it

as

a

person.)

We

cannot

explain

the

inconsistencies in the

dialogue

by integrating

direct

speech

into

a

"higher"

order of

discourse,

the narrative.

The

text

sets

voices

in

playful

oscillation,

the

way

a

painter

sometimes

plays

with

the

figure

and

ground

of a

picture-now

we

see

a

goblet,

now

the outlines of a

face;

now

we

"hear" a charac-

ter named "Darl"

saying

"I reckon," now we

"hear"

a narrator

named

"Darl"

comparing

Addie's coffin

to "a

cubistic

bug."

In

As

I

Lay

Dying

there is no

guaranteed

discursive hier-

archy.

The novel

itself calls

our attention to

this

separation

of voice

from

person:

"Whitfield

begins.

His voice is

bigger

than him. It's like

they

are not the

same. It's

like he is

one,

and his

voice

is

one .

.

. the

mud-splashed

one

and

the

one

triumphant

and sad"

(p.

86).

In

Of

Grammatology

Jacques

Derrida dem-

onstrates

that

even

Saussure,

heir

as

he

was of

the

Western

logocentric metaphysic,

could

not

allow the

relationship

between

signified

and

sig-

nifier,

which

he

postulated

as

arbitrary,

to

re-

main

utterly

ungrounded:

Saussure's

theory

of

signs

faltered

when,

accepting

without

question

the primacy of speech over writing, he claimed

that

speech

was

"naturally"

bound

to conscious-

ness.14 Criticism exhibits its

own

urge

to halt

the

play

of

voices

in

a

polyphonic

text

like As

I

Lay Dying

by

chasing

after

a forever

receding

"presence,"

that of nonverbal

consciousness.

We

can harken to the novel's

narrative voices

as

echoes of consciousness

by

treating

the

sections

as

interior

monologues.

The

"reality"

being

imi-

tated

in

any

section is the narrator's

psyche;

his

narrative voice is

merely

a

tool

that

the

artist

manipulates in order to represent consciousness.

The

narrator's

voice can be

augmented by

the

author's

intruding

voice

in

order

to

"convey

eloquently

the character's secret

obsessions,

to

bring

into

the

light

of

language

all

the

unspoken

obscurity seething

within his tortured

mind."15

Peabody

quotes

Anse

as

saying

"hit"

and

"keer"

because that

is

how

he

experiences

Anse's

so-

cially

inferior

dialect;

Vardaman

perceives,

or

feels,

the

horse as

"an

unrelated

scattering

of

components"

even

though

he

could never

say

such a

phrase

"out loud." The

narrative dis-

course

becomes,

from

this

interpretive

perspec-

tive,

a

symbolic

medium

bearing

no

implication

that actual discourse is

being quoted.

We "hear"

in our

reading

whatever

is

necessary

for a full

portrayal

of a character's

intuitive conscious-

ness.

Rhetorically

the sections

are

"interior,"

if

this

means that

they

occur outside

any

dramatic con-

text and

without

being

overtly

addressed to the

reader-that

is,

without audience.

Nothing

in

the novel's own

represented

events

locates the

narratives within some context exterior to the

303






"Voice" in

Narrative Texts

narrator's

mind.

But

a

strict

application

of the

term "interior"

presupposes

a

metaphysics

of

consciousness,

a

metaphysics

that the novel

challenges.

None of

the

sections is

framed

by

a

storytelling

situation;

yet

many

"sound"

publicly

told. Verisimilitude of

narrating

voice

can,

by

itself,

create

dramatic

context. Mimetic

voice

creates

scene,

through

mannerisms

totally

within

a narrator's

voice

that

imply

an

audience,

a

place,

and

even a time of

telling.'6

The

degree

to

which

given

sections

sound

"public,"

like

the

degree

to

which

they

are

colloquial,

varies

throughout

the

novel;

the

effect

of

this

is to ob-

literate

any

strict

demarcation between

interior

and

exterior,

between

thought

and talk.

All

the

sections

are interior

by

one

criterion,

exterior

by

another equally valid criterion. The narratorsdo

speak

instead

of think or

muse

or "free-associ-

ate,"

but as narrators

they speak

to no one

(not

even

themselves)

who

is not

a

product

solely

of

their own voices.

The

only

"reality,"

again,

seems

to be

mimetic

voice.

Yet it

is

probably

true that

most readers are

more

comfortable

with

disruptions

in

verisimili-

tude

if

they

sense

that the

narrative is

unveiling

the

ineffable

mysteries

of

the

human mind

than

if

they

feel the

disruptions

to

be

arbitrary.

7

The variance from "public" to "private" tone in

the narrative voices

might

not

seem

enough by

itself to

banish "interior

monologue"

from con-

sideration. But As

I

Lay

Dying

renders

the

pres-

ence

of

intuitive consciousness

problematical

in

another

way deriving

from

mimetic voice.

If in-

deed

the novel seeks

to

portray

a series

of indi-

vidual

consciousnesses,

if what anchors the

voices

to

some

sort of

"reality"

is

consciousness,

then

we

might

expect

to

find different

"inner"

percep-

tions

of,

and reactions

to,

the

same

events

on the

part

of different narrators.

We do find

that

each

character

responds

in

his

or

her

own

way,

but

the

various narrators

(and

we

must

again

insist

on the

distinction

between character and

nar-

rator)

perceive

and

respond

with

striking

uni-

formity.

Indeed,

"consciousness"

in

As

I

Lay

Dying

often seems a matter

more

of

communal

awareness than of

psychological

idiosyncracies

-and this

is

perhaps

to

say

that,

rather

than

being

revealed

by

language,

consciousness

is

the

language

used and

shared

by

the narrators. Not

only

do

narrators

perceive

the same

phenomena,

but

they

employ

the same

metaphors

to describe

them: the sound of

Cash's

sawing,

for

example,

is likened to

snoring

by

four

narrators-though

each

couches the

metaphor

in a

slightly

different

form:

"It sounds like

snoring"

(Cora,

p.

9);

"Cash's

saw snores

steadily"

(Peabody,

p.

45);

"the saw

begins

to snore

again"

(Darl,

p.

49);

"The

saw sounds

like

it is

asleep"

(Vardaman,

p.

63).

The

manner

in

which

the

metaphor

is

"said" does not individualize

the narrator's con-

sciousness so

much

as does his

manner

of talk-

ing.

Individuality

becomes

evident,

often,

only

in

talk,

in

how

one narrator

"expresses"

some-

thing,

not

in

any psychic

"content"

or

(as

Bleikasten

put

it)

in

any

"unspoken

obscurity

seething

within a

tortured

mind."

Tull's

and

Darl's

descriptions

of

the flood-swollen

river

evince a shared awareness rendered unique to

each character

only by

voice:

The water was cold. It was

thick,

like slush

ice.

Only

it kind of

lived. One

part

of

you

knowed

it

was

just

water,

the

same

thing

that had

been

running

under this

same

bridge

for a

long

time,

yet

when

them

logs

would

come

spewing

up

outen

it,

you

were

not

surprised,

like

they

was

a

part

of

water,

of

the

waiting

and

the threat.

(Tull,

p.

131)

Before us the thick dark current runs. It talks up

to us in

a

murmur

become

ceaseless and

myriad,

the

yellow

surface

dimpled

monstrously

nto

fading

swirls

travelling along

the surface

for an

instant,

silent,

impermanent

and

profoundly

significant,

as

though

just

beneath

the surface

something huge

and

alive

waked

for

a

moment

of

lazy

alertnessout

of

and into

light

slumber

again.

(Darl,

p.

134)

The

perceptions,

the

verbal

images

of

the

river

as alive

and

threatening,

even some

aspects

of

syntax

are

all

virtually

the same

here-yet

how

different the

passages

"sound." The

differences

can be isolated

only

with

reference to imitated

talk,

to mimetic voice. "Consciousness"

cannot

serve us as

a

presence,

as a

groundwork

of

the

"real" on which to

rest

the

novel's

shifting

lin-

guistic patterns,

for consciousness

itself is

con-

stituted

by

voice rather

than revealed

by

it.

We could

turn

to

"authorial" discourse

for

a

haven from

this

array

of voices

at

the

levels of

dialogue

and

narrative,

especially given

the

recognizable

"Faulknerian"

ring

to

so

much

of

the

diction

and

phrasing

("ceaseless

and

myriad," "impermanent

and

profoundly signifi-

304






Stephen

M. Ross

cant").

The common

expectation

that

every

voice

emanates

from a

single

human

source

leads us

to

seek

a

person

for

any

voice we

hear;

if we

detect discourse

inappropriate

to character

or

narrator,

we look

behind the fiction

for

an

author. Even when no such

entity

as an author

can

be

discovered,

we still

try

to

identify

"him"

in a

speech

implying

human

origin

somewhere

just

over

the horizon of

the

imagined

world.

Faulkner's

method,

critics tell

us,

is

nothing

but

"omniscience in

disguise"

or "omniscience with

teeth in it."18

The

idea of

an author's voice

introduces

into

our

discussion

major problems

in

poetics (prob-

lems

I

do not

try

to

solve

here).

Critics

often use

the

term "voice" in

conjunction

with "author"

or some idea of author, and "voice" has been

formally

defined

as "the

creating,

ordering,

artis-

tic

intelligence

that we

recognize

behind

any

narrating persona"

(emphasis

added).19

But

by

trying

to

straddle

the

gap

between

author

as

per-

son and

text as

discourse,

the use of

"voice" to

identify

an

author or

implied

author skirts the

issues that the

very

concept

of "author"

raises.

It

confuses all

too

easily

"creator"

with

"speaker";

such

a

definition

of "voice" tries to

explain

discourse

grounded

in

a

represented

world

by turning

it

into

discourse

grounded

out-

side the

represented

world.

Michel Foucault

speaks

of

the

gap

the idea

of an "author"

opens:

"It

would

be as

wrong

to seek the author on the

side

of

the

real writer as

on

the

side of the fic-

tional

speaker;

the

function of the

author is

realized

in

the

split

between the two."20

"Voice"

tempts

us

as

a

metonymy

for "author"

because

it can

include within its

semantic

boundaries

"person,"

"utterance,"

"style,"

and other terms

that

cluster

around the

creation

of

any particular

discourse. But

when

used as

a

metonymy

for

"author,"

or for "authorial

discourse,"

"voice"

merely begs

the

question

of

its

nature.

The

gap

Foucault

describes

opens

in

As

I

Lay

Dying

the

very

moment we

recognize

that

discourse

uttered

by

"Darl"

(or

some

other

narrator)

is

in

some

way

"Faulknerian."

If As

I

Lay Dying

does

lead

the

reader

to seek an

author,

it

does

not do so

as

a

means of

anchoring

voices

in the

"presence"

of

an

author;

the

author,

like the

narrator,

is

con-

stituted

by

mimetic

voice,

and the

paradox

of

fictional

representation

remains

unresolved.

In

As I Lay Dying the author is subjugated (sub-

jugates

himself?)

to "his" voice-and thus

"he"

vanishes,

leaving

the novel

originless

but not

(as

one

commentator

put

it)

"fundamentally

silent."21

Now that

we have

explored

the

problem

of

mimetic voices in As I

Lay Dying,

perhaps

a

general

definition is in

order: "Mimetic voice"

is

that

collection of

features in

a work's

discourse

which

prompts

readers

to

regard

a

particular

portion

of the

work's

total

discourse as

the ut-

terance of an

imagined

person

(character,

narra-

tor,

"author").

These

features are

for

the most

part

conventional,

since

(as

we have

seen)

ex-

pectations

about an

utterance and its source

allow

the

features

constituting

mimetic voice

to

function

as

they

do.

These

features

include

the

mechanics of written dialogue (punctuation,

speaker

identification,

etc.);

the conventions of

imitating

speech

(phonetic

spelling, colloquial

phrasing,

etc.);

and

grammatical

forms

(such

as

"shifters")

that call attention to the

source,

time,

and

place

of

utterance. We

could also

in-

clude

any

feature of

the discourse

governed by

"expressive identity"

(see

p.

303)-the

word

choice

in

dialogue,

for

example,

or in

style

indi-

rect

libre.

As I

Lay

Dying

both enhances

and

challenges

mimetic voice

by disrupting

the

expected

cor-

relations between voice

and

person.

The features

of

the

discourse

that lead the reader to

identify

and

to characterize

speakers operate

ambigu-

ously

for some

utterances,

so that

we

may

be

unable to

specify

an

appropriate speaker,

or we

may

be forced to

acknowledge

two or

more

pos-

sible

speakers (usually

on

different

discursive

levels)

for a

single

utterance.

In this

way

the

problematical

status of verbal

representation

in

general

and of

mimetic

voice in

particular

be-

comes

a crucial

part

of what this novel

signifies.

II

As

I

Lay Dying

generates

a

second

kind of

voice,

the

textual. If

"mimetic voice"

deserves

the word "voice" in

its

name

because

it

"re-

presents"

in

literature

phenomena

of

speech

that

involve

voice,

"textual voice"

deserves the

name

"voice"

because it

carries

out in a

text

a func-

tion

analogous

to that of

voice

in

speech.

Tex-

tual voice does not require imagined speakers;as

305






"Voice"

in

Narrative

Texts

a

function

of

the

text

alone

it

may

augment

representational

processes

in

a

narrative,

but

in

principle

textual voice is

independent

of

mime-

sis. Before

looking

at the

textual

voice of

As

I

Lay

Dying,

we

need

to

develop

this

analogy

be-

tween voice in

speech

and textual voice.

In

any

discourse,

whether

speech

or

literary

text,

some

portion

(however small)

of

the

dis-

cursive

signification

arises from a

paralinguistic

context.

The

significant

context

of

speech

in-

cludes

tone of

voice,

gesture,

volume,

proximity

of

speaker

to

listener,

and

so

on.

Theoretically,

contextual

signification

can be

contemplated

apart

from

language

and need have no

relation

to

verbal

signification.

Thus

we

could

identify

certain

gestures

or

intonations as

significant

in

themselves, irrespective of the words they ac-

company.

In

practice,

of

course,

the

demarca-

tion

between context

and

language

is

difficult

to

draw,

because

the two are to a

large

extent

mu-

tually reinforcing.

We can

note,

however,

that

the

paralinguistic

context is

limited,

by

defini-

tion,

to

parole:

contextual

signification

can

arise

only

when

a

specific

discursive act

takes

place.22

One

component

in the

paralinguistic

context,

the

one

most

intimately

involved with

language

(that is, with langue), is the embodiment given

to

language

in

a

discursive act. In

speech,

lan-

guage

comes forth

as

sound;

sounds emitted

in

the

speech

act

embody language

and make

it

manifest.

Voice

is

the

signifying

aspect

of

lin-

guistic

embodiment.

We

designate

as

"voice"

that

aspect

of

signifying

activity

wherein the

em-

bodiment

of

language

generates

signification,

without

necessary

reference to

verbal

significa-

tion. To

put

it

another

way,

"voice"

names

that

portion

of

signification

contributed

by

the

physi-

cal form in

which

language

is made

manifest.

And,

because the

embodying

of

language

is an

act

(occurring

in

speech,

in

writing,

and

in

read-

ing)

governed

largely by

convention

yet permit-

ting

individual

variation,

voice allows

and even

prompts

an

auditor to

regard

a

discourse as an

utterance

by

some

specifiable

person.

Voice

establishes and

affects

the

relationships

among

utterance,

speaker,

and

listener. We

have

all

played

the

familiar

game

of

altering

what

a sen-

tence

says by

shifting

vocal

emphasis

from

word

to

word:

"Shoot the lion."

"Shoot

the

lion?"

"Shoot the lion " "Shoot the lion." "Shoot the

lion."

Whenever I

speak,

there is a

residue

of

signification

beyond

the words and

their

ar-

rangements,

a

residue

made

up

partly

of

conven-

tions

(which

writing

marks

only

inadequately)

and

partly

of

my unique way

of

embodying

lan-

guage.

That is

my

voice.

Textual

voice

arises in an

analogous

way.

When

language

is

embodied in

writing

(in

print

in

most

literary

works),

textual

voice is

the

aspect

of

the

printed

text

that

generates significa-

tion

without

necessary

reference

to

verbal

sig-

nification.

"Textual voice"

refers to

that

portion

of a

text's

signification

contributed

by

the

form

in

which

language

is

embodied,

that

is,

by

its

parole.

Since it

is

part

of

a

literary

work's

con-

text,

the

printed

book,

in

theory,

already

has

some bearing on the discourse and its signifying

activity.

The

felt

participation

of

the

text

may

be

close

to

nil,

however;

if all conventions

of

print

(typography,

punctuation,

etc.)

are

strictly

ad-

hered

to,

readers are oblivious

of the text

as ob-

ject.

But

when

some

feature

of the

inscribed text

implicates

itself

in the

signifying activity,

then

textual

voice

can

be discerned.

Textual

voice,

then,

is the

result

of elements in the

physical

text that

signify

without

necessary

dependence

on

language

and

that

prompt

or

allow the

reader to

regardthe printed text as a source of signification.

This

definition

describes an

analogy

between

voice

in

speech

and

what

I am here

calling

textual

voice.

Textual voice

does not

"re-

present"

speech,

nor does it lead

to an

an-

thropomorphic

"speaker."

It

is a

function of the

text's

discourse

that identifies

and

"character-

izes" a

discursive

origin,

the

text

itself,

just

as

mimetic

voice

identifies

and

characterizes

imag-

inary

speakers.

As

soon

as

a

feature of the

text

functions

to

represent

or

imitate

speech,

it

ceases to

belong, properly speaking,

to

the

work's

paralinguistic

context

and becomes

part

of the

work's

representations.

In

principle

tex-

tual

voice

and

mimetic voice

are

mutually

exclu-

sive,

although

they join

in the

work's

total

signifying

activity.

Those

features in a

text that

give

rise

to tex-

tual

voice

do

so on

the visual

plane.

They

may

or

may

not

have

oral

counterparts,

but in

a

text

they

function

when

read,

when

apprehended

by

the

reader's

eye.23

The

textual features

must

articulate a

visual

difference that

signifies.

The

analogy to voice in speech holds in this, too:

306






Stephen

M. Ross

those

features

of

speech

that we

identify

as voice

depend

on

audible

differences,

on articulated

differences that

signify.

Writers,

especially

poets,

have

long

experi-

mented

with

visual

effects,

with how the

eye

reads the text. Fiction writers have done this less

extravagantly

than

poets,

but

they

have done

so

nonetheless.

The run-on

prose

that

Joyce

uses in

Molly

Bloom's

soliloquy

has

become a common

way

to

write

so-called

stream-of-consciousness

prose,

and

clearly

in

such

discourse

some

signifi-

cation

accrues

to the

printed

form of the un-

punctuated

sentences.

John

Barth

wrote of his

story

"Menelaiad"

(which

I

invoke

at the

begin-

ning

of

this

essay)

as

a

narrative

for

"printed

voice"

because some

of

its effects

(the

quotes

within quotes within quotes .. .) depend on the

reader's

seeing

them.24

Faulkner himself

ex-

perimented

frequently

with

punctuation,

speaker

identification,

italics-he

even

wanted The

Sound and the

Fury

printed

in different colored

inks.25

Attention

to

literature's

printed

surface,

whether

paid

by

poet,

fiction

writer,

or

critic,

has

too

often been

regarded

as

a trivial enter-

prise.

But

a

thoroughgoing poetics

must con-

front

literature as inscribed

object

and

recognize

that it can be engaged only through an act of

reading.

Proper

attention to

the

nature

of

writing

will

be

concerned,

not

simply

with

isolated

ex-

periments,

but with the role that

vision

plays

in

all

reading

and the

effect of

print

on

signification

in

all

works.26 Such a concern would not

seek

to

"empiricize"

criticism

naively

by

treating

liter-

ary

works

solely

as

objects

we check out of li-

braries.

But we

too

often

forget

what

Derrida

warns

us,

that

any

embodiment

of

language

al-

ready

"re-presents"

its own form:

writing

masks

its

materiality

behind

verbal

meaning,

behind

communicative

function,

behind its

potential

to

be

spoken;

but it is

still

writing.

As

I

Lay Dying

exhibits

many

features that

generate

textual voice.

These

are the

major

cate-

gories:

1.

Frequent

changes

to

and from

italic

type.

2.

The

section

headings

and the

novel's title.

3.

"Run-on"

sentences

(and

other

syntactic

forms common to

stream-of-consciousness

writ-

ing).

4.

Variations

in,

or

absence

of,

expected

speaker

identification.

5.

Unusual

punctuation,

capitalization,

spac-

ing,

and

paragraphing.27

6. The

sequence

of

sections.

7.

Various isolated features that call atten-

tion

to

the text as

an

inscribed

object.

Three

examples:

(a)

the sketch of the coffin's

shape

(p.

82);

(b)

the

presenting

of what a road

sign

"says"

first as

one

would see it-"New

Hope

3

mi."-and

then

as

one would

"say"

it-"New

Hope

three

miles"

(p.

114); (c)

the

numbered

list of

reasons

for

building

the coffin "on

the

bevel"

(pp.

77-78).28

Some of these

features

are

more

closely

linked

to the novel's

verbal

signification,

and to its

representations,

than

others,

but each

in some

way

calls attention

to

the

text as a source of

signification.

Readers have a strong tendency (a tendency

Faulkner

plays

on)

to

"naturalize" these fea-

tures of textual voice

by referring

them to some

represented

"reality"

other than the

text-just

as

viewers will lean

closer

to

try

to make out

the

nude

descending

the

staircase

in

Marcel Du-

champ's

famous

painting.

But

as we

discovered

with mimetic

voice,

representational

reduction

fails

to account for the

experience

of

reading

As

I

Lay Dying

(or

for

the

experience

of

viewing

Duchamp's painting).

No

translation

of

textual

features can fully "silence" the textual voice.

The section

headings,

for

example,

do name

the

narrator in

each

section,

but

the

status

of

these

names

is

ambiguous.

Do

they identify speakers

of the

narrative

discourse,

so

that

we should

read them as we

do

speaker

identifications

in

dialogue

(the

heading

of the

first section would

then

be read as if it were

"Darl

said")?29

This

would

impose

a dramatic

context of

sorts

on the

narration,

turning

the

sections into overt

mono-

logues

and

demanding

that we treat them as

speech,

but

such

an

approach

is difficult

to

rec-

oncile with what

we hear in

many

sections.

Perhaps

instead we

should

regard

the

headings

as labels

only,

as

labeling

the discourse as "be-

longing

to"

Darl, Vardaman,

Addie,

Tull,

or

some

other

character.

But

this

procedure

would

merely

substitute the

ambiguity

of

"belongs

to"

for the

ambiguity

of the

heading

itself-how

does a

discourse

"belong"

to

someone

if he or

she

does

not

speak

it,

or

write

it?

Perhaps

the

headings

name

the

"consciousness"

being

re-

vealed

to

us

in

the

section-the

first

section is

Darl. But consciousness will not suffice as a sub-

307






"Voice"

in

Narrative

Texts

stitute for

the narrative

discourse-what

Darl

is

is

"spoken"

language.

We do

better,

I

think,

to

attend to the textual voice and

regard

the

section

headings

as

chapter

titles

or

as

textual

division

markers.

The novel

dissimulates

the

linguistic,

nominal status of the

headings,

presenting

them

finally

as

icons

to

be

seen

as

much

as names

to

be

"spoken."

The book's

title also resists

representational

accounting.

The

phrase

"as

I

lay

dying"

sounds

spoken

because

of the

"I"

(that

most

problemat-

ical of

all

shifters).

Yet

who

speaks

it,

and

when?

Does

Addie

Bundren

say

this?

She

does

"lay dying"

for

part

of

the

story,

and she

even

"speaks"

as

a

narrator

after she has

died.

But

this

would make

hers the

controlling "point

of

view" or "consciousness" for the entire book, an

interpretation

this reader

at least is

not

willing

to

accept. Perhaps

Darl

says

"as

I

lay

dying,"

since

he is

the most

frequently

heard

narrator,

and his

mind

does,

at

times,

seem

the

controlling

one

in

the

story.

Perhaps

it is the "author" who utters

the

title's

phrase-the

author is

usually

the

one

we

hold

responsible

for a title-but are

we

will-

ing

to

allow

the "I"

to refer to

Faulkner,

or even

to a

hypothetical

"implied

author"?

None

of

these

alternatives

quite

satisfies;

it seems

prefer-

able to regard the title as a purely visual sign

emblazoned on

the book's

cover,

though

Faulk-

ner

has

rendered

even this

status

suspect by

making

the title

appear

to be

"spoken"

from

somewhere

within the

fiction.

Faulkner

employs

italicized

print frequently

in

As

I

Lay Dying,

as

he

does

in

other

novels.

Although

occasional

words

seem

to be

italicized

to

indicate

vocal

stress,

the

italics

normally

occur

in

passages

far too

long

to

allow for verbal

contrast

(we

might

think

here

of the

italicized

fifth

chapter

of

Absalom,

Absalom ).

Instead,

the

difference

created

by

a

type

change

is dis-

cursive: in

some

way

the

entire

italicized

pas-

sage

is

different in

status

from the

preceding

and

following

passages

in roman

type.

But

different

in

what

way?

For each

type

change

we

might

devise a rationale

appropriate

to the context of

the

particular

section

in which

it

occurs. But

no

pattern

emerges.

Sometimes

the

italics accom-

pany

a

change

in

narrative time

(pp.

86-87);

sometimes

they

mark a

distinction

between two

"fields of

perception" (p.

85);

sometimes

they

hint that

a

"sublimated"

or

"deeper"

level

of

consciousness

is

being

exposed

in the

italicized

discourse than

in

the

roman

(p.

205).

This

list

of

possibilities

could

be

extended

until each

change

in

type

has

its

own

"reality"

to

explain

it,

but this would merely substitute our own fiction

for

the

one

given by

the text. The

italics do not

equal

anything.

They

are

arbitrary

textual varia-

tions

that

articulate a

difference.

Just as

the

novel

does not allow

us to

reduce

mimetic

voice

to

an

imaginary speaker,

it

con-

tinually

drives

us

away

from

"represented

reali-

ties"

that

might

account

for,

and

silence,

textual

voice.

Textual voice is

not subordinate to

rep-

resentation. At

the same

time that the

novel

disrupts

mimetic voices

and

thus calls

our

atten-

tion to them as voices, it insists on its identity as

a text. In As

I

Lay Dying

voices

(mimetic

and

textual)

are

constantly

breaking

the

novel's

perceptual

"surface"

(the

print

we

see,

the

lan-

guage

we

recognize,

the

speakers

we

"hear")

into

unexpected

discursive

planes,

the

way

a

cubist

painting

shatters

representational

images

so

that

the

painting

can assert

the

image

of

it-

self.30

United

States

Naval

Academy

Annapolis, Maryland

Notes

1

Barth,

Lost in the

Funhouse:

Fiction

for

Print,

Tapes,

and

Live

Voice

(New

York:

Doubleday,

1968),

pp.

131,

167.

2

That we

recognize

"Menelaus"

as

a

name from

an

earlier

narrative

adds,

of

course,

another chamber

to

Barth's

funhouse.

3

Oxford

English

Dictionary.

Some

other connota-

tions

of

"voice" include

the

power

of

speech

and a

characteristic way of speaking. Grammatical "voice"

reminds

us

that

"voice"

establishes

relationships,

an

implication

with which Gerard Genette enriches

his

narrative

theory

in

Figures

11

(Paris:

Seuil,

1972),

pp.

225-67.

4

A

thorough

examination of the

polysemy

of

"voice"

as

used in

critical discourse would

necessitate

another

essay.

I

list

here

a few

critical

works

that

employ

"voice" n

some manner

important

to

their cen-

tral arguments: Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard

308






Stephen

M.

Ross

Miller

(New

York: Hill and

Wang,

1974);

Wayne

Booth,

The Rhetoric

of

Irony (Chicago:

Univ.

of

Chicago

Press,

1974);

Norman

Friedman,

"Point

of

View

in

Fiction:

The

Development

of a Critical

Con-

cept,"

PMLA,

70

(1955),

1160-84;

rpt.

in

The

Theory

of

the

Novel,

ed.

Philip

Stevick

(New

York:

Free

Press, 1967), pp. 108-37; Genette, Figures 111;Geof-

frey

H.

Hartman,

The Fate

of

Reading

(Chicago:

Univ.

of

Chicago

Press, 1975);

Gabriel

Josipovici,

The

World

and the

Book

(Stanford,

Calif.: Stanford

Univ.

Press,

1971);

Eric

Rabkin,

Narrative

Suspense

(Ann

Arbor:

Univ.

of

Michigan

Press,

1973);

Guy

Rosolato,

"The

Voice

and

the

Literary

Myth,"

in

Structuralist

Controversy,

ed.

Richard

Macksey

and

Eugenio

Donato

(Baltimore:

Johns

Hopkins

Univ.

Press,

1972),

pp.

201-14.

Norman

Page,

in

Speech

in the

English

Novel

(London:

Longman,

1973),

discusses

many

issues

re-

lating

to

voice

but

never

uses

the

word outside

quota-

tion

marks.

These

works illustrate

most

of the

im-

portant

uses

(and misuses)

of "voice"

as

a

critical

term,

apart

from

occasional or

purely figurative

uses.

All

these

uses

(with

the

exception

of

Rosolato's)

are

touched

upon

in

my essay.

5

The

term

"positive

lever"

is

Jacques

Derrida's.

See

Translator's

Preface to

Of

Grammatology,

trans.

Gaya-

tri

Chakravorty Spivak

(Baltimore:

Johns

Hopkins

Univ.

Press,

1976),

p.

Ixxv.

6

All

references

are

to

As I

Lay Dying (1930;

rpt.

New

York:

Vintage-Knopf,

1964).

7

Genette,

"Boundaries

of

Narrative,"

trans.

Ann

Levonas,

New

Literary

History,

8

(Autumn

1976),

1-13.

This

is

a translation

of

Genette's

essay

"Fron-

tieres du

recit,"

Figures

11

(Paris:

Seuil, 1969).

8

The manner in which critics praise dialogue is

indicative:

"consistently

echoes

the

accepted

speech

of

the

day,"

"there

is no line of

dialogue

from a

novel

that

could

not

easily

be

imagined

proceeding

from

the

mouth of an

actual

person,"

and "the

dialogues

...

could

not

reproduce

actual

speech

more

faithfully,

and

more

unselectively,

if

they

had

been

transcribed

from

a

tape-recorder."

These are

quoted

by

Page,

p.

3.

9See

David

Hayman

and Eric

Rabkin's

discussion

of the

"untrustworthy

arrator"

n

Form

in

Fiction:

An

Introduction to

the

Analysis

of

Narrative

Prose

(New

York:

St.

Martin's, 1974),

pp.

73-77.

10

See

Joseph

Robertson,

An

Essay

on

Punctuation

(1785;

facsimile

rpt.

ed. R. C.

Alston,

Menston, Eng.:

Scolar,

1969),

pp.

100,

147.

11

Such a

brief

example

does not do

justice

to

the

flexibility

of

the novel's vernacular.Even within a

single

narrative

section

the same

character's

speech

may

vary

slightly.

"Hit"

for

"it"

and the

dropping

of

"g"

from

"ing"

are

the most

noticeable

variations. The

manu-

script

of As

I

Lay Dying

(housed

at

Alderman

Library,

Univ. of

Virginia)

shows

that

Faulkner

deleted

"hit"

from

many

passages

of

dialogue

and

added it in

others.

12

See

R.

W.

Franklin,

"Narrative

Management

in

As

I

Lay

Dying,"

Modern Fiction

Studies,

13

(Spring

1967),

57-65,

and Peter

Swiggart,

The

Art

of

Faulk-

ner's

Novels

(Austin:

Univ.

of Texas

Press,

1962),

pp. 61, 70.

13 A

vital

distinction

between

point

of view

and

voice in

narrative is

developed by

Genette in

Figures

III.

14

Derrida

on

Saussure: "The affirmation of the

essential

and

'natural' bond

between the

phone

and

the

sense,

the

privilege

accorded to

an order

of

signi-

fier (which then becomes the major signified of all

other

signifiers) depends

expressly,

and in

contradiction

to

the other

levels of the

Saussurian

discourse,

upon

a

psychology

of

consciousness

and

of

intuitive

conscious-

ness"

(p. 40).

15

Andre

Bleikasten,

Faulkner's As I

Lay

Dying,

trans.

Roger

Little

(Bloomington:

Indiana

Univ.

Press,

1973),

pp.

63-64.

16This

is

especially

true for

narrators

outside

the

Bundren

family

or

neighborhood.

Their more

public

narratives are in

the

past

tense

(the

Bundrens'

and

Tull's

vary

in

tense)

and never

violate verisimilitude

of

voice and

person.

An obvious

example

of how

the

narratives

are

rendered "public"comes when Samson

tries

to recall

someone's

name: "'Who's

that?'

Mac-

Callum

says:

I

can't think of his

name: Rafe's

twin;

that one

it

was.

.

. . 'You

better

holler

at

them,'

Mac-

Callum

says.

Durn

it,

the

name

is

right

on the

tip

of

my

tongue"

(pp.

106,

107).

17

Wayne

Booth makes

a similar

point

about

the

freedom

allowed

in

portraying consciousness,

though

he is

speaking

of

"sympathy"

ather

than

"plausibility":

"Generally

speaking,

the

deeper

our

plunge

[into

a

character's

mind],

the more

unreliability

we will

accept

without loss

of

sympathy" (The

Rhetoric

of

Fiction

[Chicago:

Univ. of

Chicago Press, 1961],

p.

164).

18

Bleikasten,

p.

64,

and

Booth,

Rhetoric

of Fiction,

p. 161.

19

Karl

Beckson

and

Arthur

Ganz,

Literary

Terms:

A

Dictionary

(rev.

ed.

of A Reader's

Guide

to

Literary

Terms, 1960;

New

York:

Noonday,

1975),

p.

181.

The

original

version

did

not

contain

"voice."

In

the title of

a

recent

article

Daniel

R.

Schwarz

uses "voice"

(ap-

parently

meaning

"author's

voice")

in

a

manner

imply-

ing

that

all

readers

will

understand

the

term

in

the

same

way:

"Speaking

of Paul

Morel:

Voice,

Unity,

and

Meaning,"

Studies

in the

Novel,

8

(Fall

1976),

255-77.

20

Foucault,

"What

Is an

Author?" Partisan

Review,

42

(1975),

610. See also The

Archaeology of

Knowl-

edge,

trans. A.

M. Sheridan

Smith

(New

York:

Harper,

1972),

pp.

92-95.

21

I

paraphrase

Calvin

Bedient,

who

says

that one

reason

the novel

seems

so

mysterious

and "contains no

explanations"

s

that

there is

no

"organizer

behind

the

spectacle"

of

events.

"There is thus

in

the

novel

a

fundamental

silence

that is

truly

terrible"

("Pride

and

Nakedness: As I

Lay

Dying,"

Modern

Language

Quar-

terly,

29

[March

1968],

62).

22

The

term

"context"

s also

used

to denominate

one

aspect

of

verbal

signification:

a

word's

signification

can

be

determined

by

the

words

with

which it

appears.

This

kind of

verbal

context is

not

part

of

the

paralinguistic

context I

am

referring

to.

23

Punctuation is sometimes on the border line be-

309






"Voice" in

Narrative Texts

tween textual and mimetic

voice. We

can

signal

a

"question"

orally

with

a

rising

pitch

at

the

end of a

sentence;

we can indicate

it

verbally through

word

order;

we can mark it

in

a text with

"?" The

oral

and

textual

markings

both can

function

without

the

verbal;

each

is

part

of its

respective

kind

of voice.

To the

extent that quotation marks indicate the "re-presenta-

tion" of

spoken

words,

they

are

part

of

mimetic

voice;

to the

extent

that

they

bracket a

word

or

phrase

to

give

it

special

status,

to call

attention

to

it,

they

belong

to textual

voice.

24

Author's

Note

to

Lost

in

the

Funhouse,

p.

ix.

25

Selected

Letters

of

William

Faulkner,

ed.

Joseph

Blotner

(New

York:

Random, 1977), p.

44.

26

John

Hollander

has written

about

poetry

(and

not

merely

"experimental"

poetry)

as

for

the

ear

and

for the

eye:

Vision

and

Resonance: Two

Senses

of

Poetic

Form

(New

York: Oxford

Univ.

Press, 1975).

27

Experiments

with

punctuation,

etc.,

are

more

frequent and more complicated in The Sound and the

Fury

(esp.

in the

Quentin

section)

than

in As

I

Lay

Dying.

28

We

might

also include the

unusual

variations

in

tense

(in

the

narrative

discourse),

most

of

which

do

not

affect the

time of

narration. These

are,

however,

verbal

changes

with

no

special

visual

status,

so I

hesi-

tate to include them as

part

of textual voice. See my

discussion of

the

tense

changes

in

"Shapes

of Time and

Consciousness in As

I

Lay

Dying,"

Texas Studies in

Literature and

Language,

16

(1975),

723-37.

29

Virginia

Woolf

uses

precisely

this

technique

of

introducing

interior

monologue

with

conventional

speaker

identification:

"'The

purple

light,'

said

Rhoda,

'in

Miss Lambert's

ring.

.'" (The Waves

[New

York:

Harcourt, 1931],

p.

34).

The effect is to make

the

monologues

much

closer

in

status

to

imitated

speech.

30

I

am

grateful

for

the assistance I

received,

in com-

pleting

this

essay,

from a

National

Endowment

for the

HumanitiesSummerStipend.

310

Documents

Voice' in Narrative Text