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As I Lay Dying's narrative structure
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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.
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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
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7/17/2019 'Voice' in Narrative Text
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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
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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
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"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
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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
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"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
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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
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"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
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
(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
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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
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
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"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
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
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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
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"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