Abstract:
This study seeks to study narrative distance in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady. It
analyzes the narrative to show how information is dramatically presented to minimize
authorial intrusion. The study uses Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse on the narrative
as the instrument for determining how the narrative achieves narrator distance. Henry
James is one of the key proponents of dramatic method of narration in the early 20th
century, and his experiment with this technique of narration in The Portrait of a Lady
proves how narrator influence may be suppressed. The analysis focuses on the narration
of events and narration of speech to determine the range of distance between the narrator
and the fictive elements in the narrative. The study reveals through the analysis that
narrator distance increases when the narrator presents information from the perspective of
the characters themselves, and there is a scenic, experiential approach to characterization
and events—leading to maximum information to the reader. However, it decreases when
the narrator presents information from his own perspective—leading to minimum
information to the reader. Consequently, The Portrait of a Lady is an exemplar of the
modernist narrative that tries to produce the novel like drama. In the final analysis, the
study makes recommendations to readers and researchers of fiction on some of the
myriad ways of deriving maximum information from the modern narrative.
Description:
A Dissertation/Thesis in the Department of English, Faculty of
Languages, Submitted to the School of Graduate Schools, University of Education, Winneba, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
award of the Master of Philosophy (Literature in English) degree.
AUGUST, 2015