The One Vs. the Many

by Woloch, Alex

• ISBN13: 9780691113135
• ISBN10: 0691113130
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Does a novel focus on one life or many? Alex Woloch uses this simple question to develop a powerful new theory of the realist novel, based on how narratives distribute limited attention among a crowded field of characters. His argument has important implications for both literary studies and narrative theory. Characterization has long been a troubled and neglected problem within literary theory. Through close readings of such novels asPride and Prejudice,Great Expectations, andLe Pegrave;re Goriot, Woloch demonstrates that the representation of any character takes place within a shifting field of narrative attention and obscurity. Each individual--whether the central figure or a radically subordinated one--emerges as a character only through his or her distinct and contingent space within the narrative as a whole. The "character-space," as Woloch defines it, marks the dramatic interaction between an implied person and his or her delimited position within a narrative structure. The organization of, and clashes between, many character-spaces within a single narrative totality is essential to the novel's very achievement and concerns, striking at issues central to narrative poetics, the aesthetics of realism, and the dynamics of literary representation. Woloch's discussion of character-space allows for a different history of the novel and a new definition of characterization itself. By making the implied person indispensable to our understanding of literary form, this book offers a forward-looking avenue for contemporary narrative theory.

Table of Contents

Prologue The Iliad's Two Wars	1	(11)
The Proem	1	(2)
When Achilles Disappears: A Reading of Book 2	3	(5)
The Death of Lykaon	8	(4)
Introduction Characterization and Distribution	12	(307)
Character-Space: Between Person and Form	12	(2)
Characterization and the Antinomies of Theory	14	(7)
``They Too Should Have a Case''	21	(3)
Two Kinds of Minorness	24	(2)
Function and Alienation: The Labor Theory of Character	26	(4)
Realism, Democracy, and Inequality	30	(2)
Austen, Dickens, Balzac: Character-Space in the Nineteenth-Century Novel	32	(5)
The Minor Character: Between Story and Discourse	37	(6)
Narrative Asymmetry in Pride and Prejudice	43	(82)
Minor Characters in a Narrative Structure	43	(7)
The Double Meaning of Character	50	(6)
The One vs. the Many	56	(6)
Asymmetry: From Discourse to Story	62	(6)
Characterizing Minorness 1: Compression	68	(9)
The Space of the Protagonist 1: Elizabeth's Consciousness	77	(5)
Characterizing Minorness 2: Externality	82	(6)
Helpers: Charlotte Lucas and the Actantial Theory	88	(9)
The Space of the Protagonist 2: Elizabeth's Self-Consciousness	97	(6)
Wickham: ``How He Lived I Know Not''	103	(13)
Minor Minor Characters: Representing Multiplicity	116	(9)
Making More of Minor Characters	125	(52)
Distorted Characters and the Weak Protagonist	125	(8)
Between Jingle and Joe: Asymmetry and Misalignment in The Pickwick Papers	133	(10)
Seeing into Sight: Mr. Elton and Uriah Heep	143	(6)
Partial Visibility and Incomplete Vision: The Appearance of Minor Characters	149	(6)
Repetition and Eccentricity: Minor Characters and the Division of Labor	155	(12)
``Monotonous Emphasis'': Minorness and Three Kinds of Repetition	167	(10)
Partings Welded Together: The Character-System in Great Expectations	177	(67)
Between Two Roaring Worlds: Exteriority and Characterization	177	(11)
The Structure of Childhood Experience	188	(6)
Interpreting the Character-System: Signification, Position, Structure	194	(4)
Metaphor, Metonymy, and Characterization	198	(9)
Getting to London	207	(6)
Three Narrative Workers and the Dispersion of Labor in Great Expectations	213	(25)
Wemmick as Helper (the Functional Minor Character)	214	(3)
Magwitch's Return (the Marginal Minor Character)	217	(7)
Orlick and Social Multiplicity (the Fragmented Minor Character)	224	(14)
The Double: A Narrative Condition?	238	(6)
A qui la place?: Characterization and Competition in Le Pere Goriot and La Comedie humaine	244	(75)
Typification and Multiplicity	244	(16)
The Problem: Who Is the Hero?	244	(2)
Character, Type, Crowd	246	(9)
Balzac's Double Vision	255	(5)
The Character-System in Le Pere Goriot	260	(28)
La belle loi de soi pour soi	260	(5)
Goriot: The Interior as Exterior	265	(2)
Rastignac: The Exterior as Interior	267	(5)
Between the Exterior and the Interior	272	(10)
Interiority and Centrality in Le Pere Goriot and King Lear	282	(6)
The Shrapnel of Le Pere Goriot	288	(31)
Recurring Characters, Le Pere Goriot, and the Origins of La Comedie humaine	288	(7)
The Social Representation of Death: Le Pere Goriot and Le Cousin Pons	295	(8)
Cogs in the Machine: Les Poiret between Le Pere Goriot and Les Employes	303	(5)
Competition and Character in Les Employes	308	(11)
Afterword Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and the Prehistory of the Protagonist	319	(18)
Notes	337	(38)
Works Cited	375	(8)
Acknowledgments	383	(2)
Index	385