proposal paper

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the notion of lost time in critical accounts of narrative fic- tion. The paper begins by briefly exploring the work of the representative New Critics Brooks and Warren on the description of past time. I then move to consid- er the story/sequence distinction in the work of narratologists such as Genette, Chatman and Bal. As a bridge to the major discussion, I introduce Michael Too- lan’s Narrative (2001 [1988]) which attempts to explore how aspects of the nar- rative are revealed through key lexicogrammatical choices. I attempt to build on Toolan’s basic insight about the importance of thematically marked sentences in a brief re-reading of the narrative discourse of Joyce’s “Eveline”. In order to re- solve a central difficulty in Toolan’s analysis, I put forward a theory of narrative territory – the creation within the narrative discourse of a differentiated spatio- temporal continuum for the story events. Within the conceptual framework pro- vided by the concept of the narrative territory, I then contrast the distinct func- tions of lost time in James Joyce’s unmarked order fiction “An Encounter” and his marked order narrative “The Sisters”.

6. Introduction

The traditional critical literature on short fiction demonstrates a surprising lack of concern with the manner in which the description of the sphere of past action – or what I will refer to as lost time – serves to delimit the scope of present narra- tive outcomes. Representative New Critics such as Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, for example, view the description of past time in short fiction sim- ply as an aspect of story background, a part of the preparatory exposition, even in those short fictions where the description of time indicates “a process … has been going on for years” (1959: 647). Gérard Genette’s (1972) Narrative Dis- course places much greater emphasis on the issue of narrative order, but fails to offer a rationale for why a writer might choose between a chronologically ordi-

James Joyce and narrative territory:

The distinct functions of lost time in

“An Encounter” and “The Sisters”

TERENCE PATRICK MURPHY

JLS 33 (2004), 131 – 154 0341 – 7638/04/033 – 131 © Walter de Gruyter

132 Terence Patrick Murphy

nary and a marked ordering of the narrative in the first place. Writing in the wake of the important work of Genette, narratologists such as Seymour Chatman and Mieke Bal have acknowledged the importance of the story-sequence distinction but have not contributed noticeably to an extension of the terms of the debate.

The lack of concern with the meaning of the events in lost time can be ex- plained. It results from the absence in critical discussions of short fiction of a theory of narrative territory embedded in the lexicogrammar of the discourse. The absence of such a concept helps to explain why a majority of critical articles overlook the specific functions of lost time in favor of a critical investigation of what Seymour Chatman calls the narrative’s “sense of a present moment, nar- rative NOW, so to speak” (1978: 63). A partial exception to this general rule has been the work of Michael Toolan. In Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduc- tion (2001 [1988]), Toolan attempts to demonstrate the manner in which aspects of the narrative are revealed through key lexicogrammatical choices made in the discourse. In an analysis of the opening two paragraphs of James Joyce’s “Eveline”, Toolan examines the writer’s use of a thematically marked sentence to highlight the onset of Seymour’s “narrative NOW”, arguing for the signifi- cance of such thematic signaling. In the course of his analysis, however, Toolan overlooks an earlier thematically marked sentence. He does this because, like Brooks and Warren before him, he lacks a theory of narrative territory – and, consequently, a way of dealing adequately with lost time.

In this paper, I aim to build on Toolan’s basic insight about the importance of thematically marked sentences in a brief re-reading of the narrative discourse of Joyce’s “Eveline”. The goal here is to highlight the importance of a consistent reading of the lexicogrammatical signaling of the narrative discourse. A second closely related aim is to resolve the difficulty in Toolan’s analysis by putting for- ward a theory of narrative territory in the work of James Joyce. The concept of narrative territory, the creation within the narrative discourse of a differentiated spatio-temporal continuum, will be outlined in relation to Joyce’s short fiction “An Encounter”. Building on this foundation, the third and final aim is to offer a more rigorous discussion of the use of lost time in short fiction, demonstrating why – particularly in those fictions where, as Brooks and Warren suggest “a process … has been going on for years” – it should not be seen as merely an element of the story background. This will be accomplished through an analysis of Joyce’s short fiction “The Sisters”, a marked order narrative that offers the reader an enigma about the existential meaning of a character other than that of the “I”-narrator.

7. Critics of fiction and the issue of lost time

In the second edition of Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren’s Under- standing Fiction (1959), the writers address the general issue of time in their analysis of plot and “the question of order” (1959: 79). Here, they note:

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The beginning of a story may, or may not, happen to pick up the beginning of the ac- tion which it presents. The plot may plunge us into the very middle of things, and then, stage by stage, take us back to the beginning of the action…. Or there may be a com- plicated interweaving of time. (Brooks and Warren 1959: 79)

Brooks and Warren (1959: 646) argue “any writer must have some notion of the history of his characters, enough at least to make him feel that he knows them. But, obviously, a story cannot begin at its absolute beginning”. The reason a sto- ry cannot begin at the “absolute beginning” is because “the writer wants to strike quickly into his story at a point which will lead fairly quickly and logically to the crucial moment, the climax, the point of decision on which will hinge the fate of the characters” (1959: 646). Nevertheless, Brooks and Warren (1959: 646) concede: “in almost every case – or perhaps to some degree in every case – some explanation of the background is required to make the story intelligi- ble”. In other words, “the characters must be introduced, the setting must be es- tablished, the basic situation defined”; the authors then suggest: “the answer to the question [of how much of this background is required] is always to be de- termined by the demands of the particular case” (1959: 646).

In spite of this caveat, the writers do make a broad distinction between “his- tories and backgrounds” which “are not special” – such as is presented in stories like Pirandello’s “War”, Chekhov’s “The Lament”, Hemingway’s “The Killers” – and stories “in which the past of the characters … is so important that it is dif- ficult to say exactly where preparatory exposition leaves off and immediate sig- nificance begins” – such as in Anderson’s “I Want to Know Why”, Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, and Gordon’s “Old Red”. In these latter examples, they sug- gest “the past is skilfully interwoven with the present” and “the element of time is important” since “the crisis of each story sums up, as it were, a process which has been going on for years” (1959: 647). In other words, Brooks and Warren, in spite of their gestures in the direction of a more complex position – “the past is often skilfully interwoven with the present” – still view the description of lost time as an aspect of story background or as part of the preparatory exposition.

In Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse, the writer sets out a three-fold dis- tinction for the analysis of Marcel Proust’s treatment of time in A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. For Genette, the treatment of time may be considered under three aspects: order, frequency and duration. Within the terms Genette propos- es for himself, Narrative Discourse is unquestionably a work of permanent im- portance. Genette’s study makes a powerful case for the critical analysis of nar- rative order and opens up for development a host of issues relating to the issue of time in narrative fiction. Nevertheless, the highly marked status of Proust’s work – the upshot of the fact that the Recherche is an unusually dense and in- tricately worked study of lost time – means that the French critic does not at- tempt to analyze the basic underlying distinction between narratives that are chronologically ordinary and those that employ a marked order. Genette, in

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other words, avoids the issue of the different possible treatments of lost time by confining himself to the exemplary treatment of that subject in Proust’s (marked order) masterpiece.

More unfortunately for this critical debate, narratologists working after Gen- ette have not substantially extended the framework of the discussion. In Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1978), for example, Sey- mour Chatman suggests that the relation between what he calls “reading-time” and “plot-time” raises “several interesting questions”:

For example, how is the story anchored to a contemporary moment? When is the be- ginning? How does the narrative provide information about events that have led up to the state of affairs at that moment? What are the relations between the natural or- der of the events in the story and the order of their presentation by the discourse? (Chatman 1978: 63)

Aside from rehearsing Genette’s distinction among order, duration and fre- quency, however, Chatman does not provide definitive answers to any of these questions. Indeed, his suggestion that “the discourse can rearrange the events of the story as much as it pleases, provided the story-sequence remains discern- ible” (1963) seems to commit him to a more or less laisser-faire notion of narra- tive order. Similarly, in the second edition of her major study, Narratology: In- troduction to the Theory of Narrative, Mieke Bal formally commits herself to the proposition that “the events are arranged in a sequence which can differ from the chronological sequence” (1985: 8). However, in her later discussion of this proposition, she states mostly generalities:

Playing with sequential ordering is not just a literary convention; it is also a means of drawing attention to certain things, to emphasize, to bring about aesthetic or psycho- logical effects, to show various interpretations of an event, to indicate the subtle dif- ference between expectation and realization, and much else besides. (Bal 1985: 82)

In brief, there are three criticisms that may be made of the work of both the New Critics and the narratologists. The first is their failure to offer a theoreti- cally grounded distinction between chronologically ordinary and marked order narratives; the second, is their lack of interest in the lexicogrammatical signal- ing of temporal relations within the narrative discourse. These two criticisms may be related and explained by a third: the lack of awareness of the manner in which narrative discourse may be plotted in terms of a differentiated spatio- temporal continuum.

8. Toolan and lexicogrammatical analysis

A partial exception to the general neglect within the critical literature of short fiction of the second of these two issues – the manner in which lexicogram- matical signals are deployed in narrative discourse – is contained in Michael

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Toolan’s Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (2001 [1988]). In this book, Toolan raises the question of how readers decide which sentences con- tribute most centrally to plot development. The solution he suggests is that central elements of the plot are revealed through key lexicogrammatical choices in the narrative discourse (2001 [1988]: 31). In his discussion of Joyce’s “Eveline”, the story of a young woman from Dublin who enigmatical- ly rejects the love proposal of a man named Frank by deciding not to leave her home, Toolan presents an argument for resolving how a reader decides which sentences are key to the short story’s interpretation. Although critical opinion about the story has turned on the role of Eveline’s enigmatic decision in the plot structure, he suggests that few critics have investigated these gram- matical signals.

Toolan (2001 [1988]: 31) first argues that a number of critics have identified sentence 24 as being “one of the most important disclosures of plot structure in the story”:

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. (Joyce 1967 [1914]: 37)

His intention is to challenge this consensus. In taking issue with these critics, Toolan retells the story in lexicogrammatical slow motion, paying crucial atten- tion to the manner in which the text signals the importance or otherwise of each sentence before sentence 24 for plot development. By means of this careful re- reading, Toolan (2001 [1988]: 32) is able to show that there are “various gram- matical cues that deflect or argue against treatment of the content” of the first five sentences as crucial narrative events”. He then proceeds to dismiss the next ten sentences as irrelevant to the development of plot. Since it indicates a seri- ous inconsistency in his analysis, the reasons he offers for doing this are worth rehearsing. He suggests that there are “two grounds for discounting most of this material as crucial to plot development” (2001 [1988]: 34). The first ground is the “frequent emphasis on the events reported as habitual and repeated” (2001 [1988]: 34); the second, “the pervasive use of distancing deictic or spatiotempo- ral markers, reinforcing the relative remoteness of the events and situation from the speaker’s (or in this case thinker’s) present” (2001 [1988]: 34). In his view, then, the sentence that really marks the beginning of the plot in “Eveline” is sentence sixteen. This sentence reads:

Now she was going to go away like the others. (Joyce 1967 [1914]: 37; italics mine)

The problem with Toolan’s discussion of “Eveline” is not that it incorrectly highlights the significance of the lexicogrammar but rather that it ignores part of the evidence that the lexicogrammar presents. In making the case for sen- tence 16 being the most significant of the early sentences, he contradicts him-

136 Terence Patrick Murphy

self. For, quite clearly, in the terms of markedness that he is using, the first sali- ent sentence is actually sentence six:

One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people’s children. (Joyce 1967 [1914]: 37; italics mine)

This is the first sentence in the text that offers a marked Theme: the sentence begins with a circumstance of time, one time (see Halliday 1994: 37 – 67). In con- trast, each of the first five sentences begins with an unmarked Theme: She … Her head … She … Few people … The man out of the last house (1994: 37). In other words, part of the reason for the importance that Toolan believes readers accord to sentence sixteen derives from Joyce’s earlier use of a thematically marked sentence in sentence six. To put it simply, the now in sentence sixteen presupposes the one time in sentence six.

It is therefore a mistake to argue that the reader should dismiss sentences de- scribing “habitual and repeated” events using “distancing deictic or spatiotem- poral markers” that reinforce “the relative remoteness of the events and situa- tion”. Toolan’s argument for the importance of sentence sixteen actually relies on this earlier thematically marked sentence introducing a text segment dealing with lost time for part of its textual prominence. The reason that this escapes Toolan’s notice, however, is that he has no means of incorporating the signifi- cance of those past events into his theory of narrative. What is absent is a way to categorize the significance of the textual segment that begins with the phrase “one time” as an aspect of the plot itself. In other words, the successful analysis of plot structure requires that a lexicogrammatical focus be complemented with a theory of narrative territory.

9. A theory of narrative territory

In their Introduction to Textual Linguistics, Robert de Beaugrande and Wolf- gang Dressler (1981: 94) discuss the importance of elaborating “a basic repre- sentation for the coherence of texts”. The concept of narrative territory is envi- sioned as a method for allowing such a basic representation.1 Narrative territory refers to the way in which narrative discourses in the work of James Joyce mark out a set of spatio-temporal co-ordinates for themselves in order to delimit the scope of story action and possibility. The typical Joycean narrative, in other words, uses lexicogrammatical signals to set out the default spatial co- ordinates for a story here and there while simultaneously setting out default temporal co-ordinates for a lost time, a now time and an indefinite future. These defaults are conceived, in Robert de Beaugrande’s words, as “control centers or attractors of temporary stability in processing sequences [that] enable the mind to use sparse local activations for organizing rich global configurations” (1997: 111). The simplest method for assigning sections of the narrative to here and

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there is to imagine all the textual material staked out on a Cartesian plane. The zero point on the space-time axis is occupied by the marked character in the here place at zero now time (see Figure 1, Appendix). The marked character, the character who is special or different in some way, is typically the first char- acter mentioned in the narrative or the character from whose perspective the narrative discourse is written (cf. Jakobson 1990: 134 – 140). These default set- tings create two distinct narrative possibilities: staying here (see Figure 2, Ap- pendix) and going there (see Figure 3, Appendix). In either case, narrative dis- course typically associates the choice of stasis or dynamism with the contemplation and achievement of the marked character’s goals. In going there narratives, for example, distinct goals are associated with both the initial move- ment to the there place and the time spent within the there place (see Figure 4, Appendix). Of course, in some narrative discourses, what is configured at the outset as there will turn out in fact to represent a yonder region, due to the fail- ure of the marked character to achieve his or her goal. This is in fact what tran- spires in James Joyce’s short story “An Encounter”.

9.1. Joycean narrative discourse and lost time

Even in the majority of Joyce’s narrative discourses that deal strictly with now time, however, there is always some reach backwards towards a lost time, to- gether with a zone of narrative acceleration linking these two forms of time (see Figure 5, Appendix). In Joyce’s chronological narratives, the reach of the lost time represents a form of spatio-temporal continuity with the here place, fig- ured in the person of the marked character. Introduced by the past perfect tense, the lost time commences with the earliest event represented in the narra- tive discourse that bears directly on the existential fate of the marked character.

In chronologically ordinary narrative, the duration of this lost time will be longer than the other two forms of time. For example, if now time lasts for some days, lost time will typically last for some years. In turn, the indefinite future, which sets the horizon for the story as a whole, is signaled by a slight upgrading of the duration of the time in the now section. The function of the indefinite fu- ture is often to define the overall mood of the narrative discourse. For example, short fictions like “An Encounter” that reach toward neutral circumstances of time such as the upcoming summer holidays tend to undermine tragic interpre- tations of the events in the narrative world; whereas fictions like “The Dead” that reach toward the death of one of the other characters more readily invite permanently tragic readings.

9.2. The narrative territory of “An Encounter”

James Joyce’s “An Encounter” proves to be particularly useful in demonstrat- ing the concept of narrative territory (see Figure 6, Appendix). In “An Encoun-

138 Terence Patrick Murphy

ter”, the experience of the here place divides into three general regions: the house, the garden and the school. The garden and the school divide up between them the forms of a formal and an informal education. These two places are de- scribed one after the other during the description of lost time. The first and sec- ond sentences of “An Encounter” thus serve as topic comment for what follows, with the onset of the lost time indicated by the use of the past perfect tense and the thematically marked circumstance at the beginning of the third sentence:

It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck, and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. (Joyce 1967 [1914]: 18; italics mine).

Lost time differentiates itself in the course of this situational description. The first two paragraphs introduce the older Joe Dillon, whose function is to moti- vate the concept of wayward childhood education. The function of the third paragraph is to introduce the “I” of the narrative and to contrast his personality with a wider group of “we” characters. The narration of the lost time is then spread out over the course of the first six paragraphs of the story. In this way, the narrative indicates those aspects of his temperament that will blossom un- der the sunlight of imaginative adventure. It is this significant difference in tem- perament – modern, heterosexual, and intellectual – that creates the marked status of the main character.

What serves to initiate the action in now time is the “I”-narrator’s recognition of the limits to the possibilities of here, which is restricted to playing cowboys and Indians in the back garden of Joe Dillon’s or learning Roman History in the classroom. The trip to the Pigeon House, conducted during schooltime, is a di- alectical resolution of the limits to the “I”-narrator’s formal and informal edu- cation. As he reflects, “real adventures … do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad” (20). The distinction made by the marked character between “home” and “abroad” is thus the text’s actual spec- ification of the distinction between here and there.

At the onset of now time, the there place, the goal of the marked character, ap- pears to be the Pigeon House, with Mahony and the “I”-narrator leaving here at the beginning of now time in order to journey toward this destination, believing that they will reach it some time in the late afternoon. With the contemplative transitional zone of narrative acceleration that begins with “the summer holidays were near at hand”, the rhythms of time are speeded up and shortened. This transitional zone of narrative acceleration serves as a bridge between the lost time and the now time. As a result, the description of the passage of time moves forward in rapidly decreasing bursts, from a week to an evening to the actual mo- ment of waking that begins with the circumstance of time, “in the morning”. The remainder of the narrative is then taken up with the narration of the events prop-

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er. These events unfold across the space of half a day, with the description of a journey, away from home and forward through the course of the school day, from ten in the morning or so until shortly after three in the afternoon.

Located at key spatio-temporal points along the route, the boys’ transient and meaningless speech exchanges with a variety of minor characters indicates a lack of significant story development. These points include the Canal Bridge, located at ten in the morning, where the “I”-narrator and Mahony wait fruit- lessly for the cowardly Leo Dillon; the Wharf Road, where Mahony chases “ a crowd of ragged girls” (21); the quays, located “at noon”, where the two boys sit down to eat “two big currant buns” and watch “the spectacle of Dublin’s commerce” (22); and the slow walk into Ringsend, amidst a day that “had grown sultry” after the boys have crossed the Liffey, in order to see “the Dod- der” in the early afternoon (23). This absence of genuine story-enhancing ex- changes foreshadows the eventual lack of success on the part of the marked character to erase his marked status. By the time the two boys are gazing out toward the Dodder, the “I”-narrator recognizes that “it [is] too late” and that they are “too tired to carry out our project of visiting the Pigeon House” since they have “to be home before four o’clock lest [their] adventure should be dis- covered” (23). It is at this point, with the boys contemplating the possibility of a return home by train while lying in the field that they first see the “shabbily dressed” man approaching (24).

In the mind of the marked character, the man contrasts strongly with Father Butler as a figure of seeming liberality, a potential teacher and confidant. How- ever, the “I” also notes the state of the man’s clothes, his old-fashioned hat, and his age. Significantly, at this point, there is a sudden flourish of the past perfect as the narrative discourse suddenly extends its sense of lost time to incorporate the unexpected appearance of the older-looking man.

He began to talk of the weather, saying that it would be a very hot summer and adding that the seasons had changed greatly since he was a boy – a long time ago. He said that the happiest time of one’s life was undoubtedly one’s schoolboy days, and that he would give anything to be young again. (Joyce 1967 [1914]: 24 – 25).

This passage represents an example of a major territorial defamiliarization, which is one possible outcome of the narrative discourse reaching the there place. The extension of the reach of lost time into the distant past defamiliarizes the original narrative territory. The result is that the boyhood of the old man is suddenly made to parallel the boyhood of the “I”-narrator. This narrative effect precedes the old man’s monologue in which the “I”-narrator somewhat unwill- ingly learns something of the real adventures possible outside the confines of home and school.

Crucially, however, the speech of the “I” in response to the old man is con- veyed only indirectly through the entire course of this encounter. In other

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words, the series of unsuccessful speech exchanges of the “I”-narrator and Ma- hony with an assortment of minor Dublin characters that had preceded the en- counter in the field with the strange old man continues. The “I” narrator choos- es to set definite limits to his communicative co-operation with the old man’s inquiries. In a central sense, the “I”-narrator does not set a new goal for himself to replace the original goal of reaching the Pigeon House instead he spends most of his time thwarting the somewhat unclear goals of the strange old man. He does this by confining himself to general affirmations of an interest in liter- ature, while avoiding any direct reply to the sexual aspects of the old man’s monologue. The sudden decision of the “I” to reaffirm his kinship with Mahony and to take on an assumed name (“If he comes back, I’ll be Murphy and you’ll be Smith” [26]) signal that the marked character will choose not to engage any further with the stranger. His reaffirmation of kinship with Mahony is a form of temporary reunion with the undifferentiated “we” grouping of the boys’ school.

With the onset of the short resolution, the Pigeon House turns out suddenly to be the narrative’s yonder, located impossibly at approximately five in the af- ternoon; and the boys never reach it – immediately after the encounter with the old man, it is implied that they turn back together toward home. Despite the un- settling nature of the event narrated in “An Encounter”, the location of the in- definite future in the approaching summer holidays tends to reassure the reader that the event will not be permanently traumatizing.

10. Narrative territory and marked order narrative

The three stories that employ a marked order narrative in Dubliners are “The Sisters”, “Eveline” and “The Dead”. The primary distinguishing feature of marked order fictions is that the existential identity of the main character is not at stake; instead, the true subject of the narrative is in fact another (marked) character who the main character knows somewhat well. At the onset of read- ing a marked order narrative, the reader intuitively assumes that the default set- tings are the same as those in any given chronologically ordinary narrative. It only gradually becomes apparent that these default settings need to be revised. The way a writer does this is by extending the range of the lost time dramatically into the past and by relocating the here place elsewhere.

The chief distinguishing feature of marked order lost time is that it extends much further back into the past and encroaches more dramatically on what ought to be the province of now time. In a marked order narrative, the reader initially misidentifies the now time: it is actually much more limited in both its extent and its significance than in a chronologically ordinary narrative. In this way, the scope of present action becomes limited by the weight of the past, which exerts definite pressure on the choices contemplated by the main charac- ter. Similarly, at the onset of the narrative, the reader misidentifies the nature

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of the initially focalized space. In spatial terms, marked order narratives reverse the localization of here and there. To repeat, here places are associated with the marked character. However, in marked order narratives, the marked character is someone other than the main character. It follows that the place that is ini- tially focalized in a marked order narrative is in fact a there place. Paradoxically, going there is actually coming here. This is the reason that ghost stories typically take the form of marked order narratives. Ghost stories are narratives in which someone returns to a place that believe they have never visited before.

In terms of character goals, the major difference between unmarked and marked order narratives relates to the main character’s freedom to choose. In chronological narratives, choice involves the main character’s successful or un- successful action in now time; in marked order narratives, on the other hand, this choice is simply the decision to re-interpret – or at least the potential for reinter- preting – some aspect of lost time experience (see Figure 10, Appendix). In other words, the use of a marked order narrative suggests to the reader the simultane- ous presentation of two entirely different planes of interpretation, imposed one on top of the other. The two planes consist of an initial interpretation of a series of events in lost time and their potentially decisive reinterpretation in now time.

Marked order narratives also display strategic absences in their outlining of the chronological development of the speech exchanges and events in lost time. These strategic absences create ambiguity in the meaning of lost time experi- ence, thus allowing for the alteration of the marked character’s interpretation in now time. As a result, these narratives proliferate grammatical signals, partic- ularly those of time. It is this double order of interpretation that Brooks and Warren have in mind when they write of short fiction in which “the past is skill- fully woven with the present”. These temporal markers indicate the greater complexity of the relations between the motivations of the characters in lost time and now time.

10.1. “The Sisters”: A marked order narrative

Why does James Joyce choose to begin the narration of “The Sisters” on the eve of the old priest’s death instead of with the boyhood education of the “I”-nar- rator or with the first meeting between these two characters? Why does Joyce use a marked order narrative that begins on the eve of a potentially major life- altering conversation?

The function of the Joycean exploration of lost time, this reverie over the past, is to show the main character something he did not previously know. In other words, when the story begins, the “I”-narrator is in possession of a limited stock of information; he does not know what his circumstances truly are. The dream-like and conversational reveries over the past will reflect this. As the sto- ry progresses, the “I”-narrator moves forward in space toward the most focal-

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ized space associated with the marked character of the old priest and contem- plates in now time the possibility that he has profoundly misinterpreted this old man. “The Sisters” is thus a somewhat typical example of marked order fiction. Joyce presents the reader with an extended reverie over the past in now time to provoke the main character’s possible reinterpretation of the meaning of his past experience in the light of new or forgotten information.

“The Sisters” begins with the foreknowledge of death. The Reverend James Flynn, with whom the “I”-narrator has formed a close relationship, has suffered a series of three crippling strokes. In this marked order narrative, the first place mentioned is not the place associated with the “I”-narrator but rather the place associated with the dead priest. The span of time, indicated as being “vacation time” extends forward “night after night” (7), to encompass the passage of the three strokes that kill the old man (see Figure 11, Appendix). From this opening paragraph, Joyce moves into the now time narrative that begins “at supper” and lasts an evening and a day (7 – 12). The words of Old Cotter implant in the young boy’s mind the first intimation that there may have been something un- usual about his old friend. This section concludes with the scene in the boy’s bedroom where he imagines for the first time that “the grey face [of the old priest] desired to confess something” (9). In this way, Joyce sets up the basic framework for the two competing interpretations of the meaning of the old priest’s life. The words of the other characters in now time will be matched against the boy’s memories of the old priest in lost time, in the form of dreams and daytime reveries. In other words, the movement backward in time will be set off against a movement forward in space toward the most focalized space, the dead room where the body of the old priest now lies.

The “I”-narrator’s first attempt “the next morning after breakfast” (10) to visit the “little house in Great Britain Street” (10) leads to the confirmation of Old Cotter’s intimation, something reinforced by the wording of the formal written announcement:

July 1st, 1895 The Rev. James Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine’s Church, Meath Street), aged sixty-five years. R. I .P.

(Joyce 1967 [1914]: 10).

The confirmation of death calls forth a reflection on the meaning of a life. It also forces the “I’-narrator to consider that he can no longer visit the old priest in his “little dark room” (10), causing him to walk on past and “away slowly along the sunny side of the street” (11) (see Figure 12, Appendix). In this way, the “I”- narrator’s first attempt to journey toward the most focalized place is thwarted.

This same paragraph contains the major reorientation that reveals the full ex- tent of the narrative territory. This reorientation is occasioned by the defeat of

James Joyce and narrative territory 143

the initial intention of the narrator to visit his old friend. With a “sensation of freedom”, the thoughts of the “I”-narrator reflects on the lost time when the now-dead priest “had studied in the Irish college in Rome” (11). It is the life of the priest rather than the life of the “I”-narrator that sets the proper limits of the short fiction’s narrative territory. It is only within a narrative territory de- limited by the life of the old priest that the two conflicting interpretations can be set against each other. The first interpretation sees the old priest as an im- portant mentor in the “I”-narrator’s early education. It highlights the prestige involved in being taught by this Irishman from a poor neighborhood of Dublin who was invited as a young man to Rome to study. The second interpretation sees the life of the priest as one of abnormality, a life marked by growing frus- tration, isolation and illness. This second interpretation focuses not so much on the education in the Irish College in Rome but rather on those reported later events in his life associated with the broken chalice and the confessional.

Following his first failed attempt to see the old priest, the “I”-narrator re- turns home. He then embarks on a second and ultimately successful journey. The visit to see the old priest’s corpse in the most focalized space of the dead- room demonstrates that marked order narratives move toward – rather than away from – the here place of the marked character. Extending over the course of “the evening”, however, the actual conversational exchange between the two sisters over the identity of the old priest takes place elsewhere, in the little room downstairs. It is consistent with the logic of marked order narratives that prox- imity to the most focalized space associated with the marked character leads to the revelation of the meaning of the past. However, it is perhaps significant that the actual conversational exchange between the sisters takes place at some dis- tance from the deathroom itself. By this slight spatial relocation, Joyce’s text may be signaling its distance from the interpretation offered by the old women, a view perhaps reinforced by the broken grammar in which the sisters malign the dead priest. Nevertheless, as the sisters reflect on the past events in the priest’s life, the “I”-narrator is left with the uncomfortable realization that the education he received from the priest overlaps in a permanently fuzzy manner with the priest’s growing waywardness. It is textually impossible to decide the manner or order in which the conversational exchanges between the old priest and the young boy in lost time overlap with the sisters’ very different narrative of the priest’s growing madness.

“An Encounter” and “The Sisters” thus exhibit very differently arranged nar- rative territories. In “An Encounter”, the narrative territory may be said to be- gin with the childhood of the “I”-narrator; in “The Sisters”, it begins with the education of the young man for the priesthood at the Irish college in Rome many years before the “I’-narrator is born. Brooks and Warren suggest that “[how much of the background of a short story is required] is always to be de- termined by the demands of the particular case” (646) – a more precise formula

144 Terence Patrick Murphy

would be to suggest that the narrative territory is defined by the identity of the marked character. Marked order narratives require a much greater proportion of attention to the province of lost time because they involve aspects of the his- tory of a character other than the main one.

Only marked order fictions like “The Sisters” involve the formation of dis- tinct planes of interpretation. In “The Sisters”, this first plane of interpretation is the one initially focalized through the voice of the “I”-narrator; the second plane of interpretation, which threatens to replace the first, is the one focalized through the conversational revelations of the two sisters toward the end of the narrative. In this regard, however, “The Sisters” is somewhat unusual. In almost all marked order narratives, including the important genre of the detective sto- ry, the second plane of interpretation eventually supplants the first. In “The Dead”, for example, the testimony of Gretta Conroy leaves the reader in no doubt about the secure place of the dead Michael Furey in her heart. The exis- tential crisis that Gabriel faces at the end of this novella is bound up with his need to reinterpret the meaning of his marriage in the light of this new informa- tion about the distant past. In “The Sisters”, however, Joyce does not provide the reader with enough information to offer a definitive reinterpretation of the life of the dead priest. The sisters’ new interpretation of the dead priest’s life – his growing madness – is met only by the young boy’s silence and the truncated ending of the story. Joyce omits a formal resolution of the dilemma: the story lacks a definitive reinterpretation of lost time in the voice of the “I”-narrator.

11. Conclusion

By combining an analysis of thematically marked sentence forms to highlight discourse development with a theory of Joycean narrative territory – the basic textual coordinates delimiting narrative time and space – the interpretation of story can be made more rigorous. In particular, the analysis of the lexicogram- matical signaling of the narrative territory offers striking insights into the for- mation of specific discourse effects, including previously hidden relationships that exist between the main character and other characters in the narrative world. Although this type of analysis seems particularly well suited to the inves- tigation of a rigorous construction of short fictions such as James Joyce, it is probably flexible enough to extend into the investigation of other major au- thors within the realist tradition of the short story.

Yonsei University, Seoul

James Joyce and narrative territory 145

Appendix. Figures

Figure 1. Here in the flow of now time

Figure 2. Staying here narrative

Flow of Now Time Indefinite

Future

The Marked Character

is Here

Here

Flow of Now Time Indefinite Future

Here

146 Terence Patrick Murphy

Figure 3. Going there narrative

Figure 4. Narrative territory: Initial state and transformed state goals

Here

There

Flow of Now Time Indefinite Future

Yonder

Here

There

Situation

Goal 1

Goal 2

Transformation

There

Story

James Joyce and narrative territory 147

Figure 5. Going there narrative, indicating a lost time and a zone of narrative acceleration

Here

Flow of Now TimeReach of Lost Time

There

Here

Yonder

Zone

of

Narrative

Acceleration

148 T

eren ce P

atrick M

u rp

h y

Home

Flow of Now Time

Garden School

Every evening

after school

One day

Canal

Bridge

Vitriol Works

Smoothing Iron

Quays

Ringsend

Field

Ten

in the

morning

10.25 Noon 4.00

Pigeon

House

First Week of June Summer Holidays

Day

grows

sultry

Reach of Lost Time

That

night

Home

Figure 6. The narrative territory of Joyce’s “An Encounter”

James Joyce and narrative territory 149

Figure 7. Joyce’s “An Encounter”: Initial state and transformed state goals

Figure 8. “An Encounter”: A major territorial defamiliarization

Home

Field

Situation

Goal 1:

To Visit

the Pigeon House

Goal 2:

To End the Interaction

with the Stranger

Transformation

Field

Story

Pigeon

House

Flow of Now Time

Field

Home

A long time ago

His

Childhood

Lost Time

Field

His

Journey

150 Terence Patrick Murphy

Figure 9. Chronologically ordinary narration

Figure 10. Marked order narration: The reinterpretation of lost time

Flow of Now Time

Marked Order Narration

Flow of Now Time

Reach of

Lost Time

Reach of Lost Time

Here

There

Here

There

Here

Stable Interpretation

of Past Events

Reinterpretation of

Past Events

Action after

Reinterpretation

There

Here Here

James Joyce and narrative territory 151

Figure 11. The narrative territory of Joyce’s “The Sisters” (1)

Figure 12. The narrative territory of James Joyce’s “The Sisters” (2)

Flow of Now Time

The

“I”-Narrator’s

Home

Priest’s

House

Death

of the

Old Priest

Night after night

Vacation time

The first two strokes

Flow of Now Time

Priest’s

House

Home

Supper

Goes

to sleep

Next morning

after breakfast

Shop

Windows

152 Terence Patrick Murphy

Figure 13. The narrative territory of James Joyce’s “The Sisters” (3)

Figure 14. The narrative territory of James Joyce’s “The Sisters” (4)

Reach of Lost Time

July 1, 1895

Death of the

Old Priest

Priest’s Education

of the “I”-narrator Priest studies

at the Irish college

in Rome

1830

Birth of Priest

Home

Priest’s

House

Home

After Sunset Nannie

Greets Them

Conversation about the Priest

Little Room

Downstairs Priest’s

House

Jam es Jo

yce an d

n arrative territo

ry 153

1. Interpretation by the “I”-narrator

July 1 1895

Priest studies

at the Irish College

in Rome

Birth of Priest

Breaking

of the

Chalice

Priest discovered

in the confessional,

laughing to himself

The Growing Madness

of the Priest

The Priest’s Education

of the “I”-Narrator

2. Interpretation by the Sisters

1830 July 1 1895

Projected Trip

To Irishtown

to see the

Old House

1830

?

?

Figure 15. Two planes of interpretation in Joyce’s “The Sisters”

154 Terence Patrick Murphy

Note

1. Beaugrande and Dressler (1981: 94) suggest the coherence of texts is “the outcome of combining concepts and relations into a network composed of knowledge spaces cen- tered around main topics”, but the subsequent presentation of this topic-centered network is highly unwieldy. Intuitively, it seems unlikely that such diagrammatic com- plexity reflects genuine human thought processes. In his later work, while correctly retaining the procedural approach, Beaugrande appears to have abandoned the con- cept of the network centered around main topics.

References

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Beaugrande, Robert de and Wolfgang Dressler (1981). Introduction to Textual Linguistics. London/ New York: Longman.

Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren (1959). Understanding Fiction, 2nd ed. New York: Apple- ton-Century-Crofts.

Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca/Lon- don: Cornell University Press.

Genette, Gérard (1972). Narrative Discourse: An Essay on Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Monville-Burston (eds.), 134 – 140. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Joyce, James (1967 [1914]). Dubliners. London: Jonathan Cape. Toolan, Michael (2001 [1988]). Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction, 2nd ed. London/New

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