Words and the Novelist
Language of Fiction. By David Lodge. (Rout- ledge and Kegan Paul, 35s.) • THE last few years have seen a remarkable up- surge in university studies of linguistics. After the great battles over compulsory Anglo-Saxon and the Holy Wars of Dr. Leavis, English de- partments seem to be moving towards a new and bitter conflict. The linguists claim that they are evolving a methodology which will make possible precise, scientific analysis of literary texts, and they disdain the subjective evaluations of conventional criticism. Their opponents are unhappy to see students spending so much time with morphemes and phonemes, syntax and rhetoric, apparently little related to the imagina- tive visions of a Shakespeare or Milton, and they feel that as yet the linguists have made little contribution to our understanding of the unique qualities of great art.
The virtue of David Lodge's new book is that it attempts to find a via media between linguistic analysis and evaluative criticism. He begins with an extremely intelligent description of the nature of literary language and its relation to reality. In his view, the novelist's words deserve the same kind of close attention we are accustomed to give to poetry. A common opinion is that prose refers directly to life, and the language of the novel is merely a transparent window through which the reader regards this life; the words of poetry, in contrast, create their own world. But Lodge argues that no such critical apartheid exists between prose and poetry. Fiction, like poetry, can never be adequately paraphrased or translated, for its particular formations of words create unique meanings. To prove this, he corn-
pares a passage from Proust with Scott Mon- crieff's translation, and shows that Proust's language and syntax offer subtleties of meaning which go unreflected in the English version.
If language is so important, what methods are available for analysing the verbal texture of a novel? Lodge acknowledges that in measur- ing the success of literary devices we must fall back on subjective reactions, but argues that these must be related as closely as possible to analysable stylistic effects. By such means we may approach to some unanimity of judgment, even if this is not finally attainable. He examines the contributions to stylistics made by continen- tal scholars such as Spitzer and Ullmann, and concludes that when they relate a particular literary effect to a particular ordering of lan- guage, their criticism takes a significant step forward from impressionistic appreciation. Novels bring special problems because their length makes them difficult to 'hold as a totality in the mind; Lodge believes `the perception of repetition is the first step towards offering an account of the way language works in extended literary texts.' In the second section of his book he applies this theory to six novels, Mansfield Park, Jane Eyre, Hard Times, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Ambassadors and Tono- Bangay, examining key-words such as `judgment' in Mansfield Park or 'fire' in Jane Eyre.
This critical section justifies his arguments for the importance of the novelist's words, but his emphasis on repetition fails to convince. In Jane Eyre he finds 'about eighty-five references to domestic fires (plus about a dozen separate refer- ences to "hearths"), about forty-three figurative allusions to fire, about ten literal references to fire as conflagration (in connection with Bertha's in-
cendiarism), and four references to Hell fire ' This sounds like a bad PhD thesis. Fortunately, he does not confine himself to this approach and provides excellent interpretations of Tess and The Ambassadors.
He analyses the `sensuous relish,' enforced by rhythm and alliteration, in Hardy's descrip- tion of Tess walking in the garden of Talbothays Dairy: 'She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo- spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin. . .
The conventional response of revulsion is checked by a note of celebration of the brim- ming fertility of the weeds. From this perceptive analysis Lodge proceeds to a brilliant study of Tess's relationship with nature. Such detailed studies of important passages, leading to evalua- tion of main patterns of meaning, provide a more rewarding critical approach than the count- ing of key-words. When in Tono-Bangay he discovers repeated words associating England with disease and decay, this proves nothing about the novel's literary value. In this chapter, if we examine Lodge's own style, we find, instead of precise criticism, repeated use of words such as 'vivid,' powerful."eloquent' and `skilful' to browbeat us into accepting a high estimate of the novel.
Lodge concludes with a fascinating account of Kingsley Amis's use of language, though his theories make him too sympathetic to I Like It Here. This chapter is typical of the whole book—perceptive, full of ideas, but not finally convincing.
C. B. COX
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