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To Ronald Crane

Contents

Foreword to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Acknowledgments

PART I: ARTISTIC PURITY AND THE RHETORIC OF FICTION

I. Telling and Showing

Authoritative “Telling” in Early Narration

Two Stories from the Decameron

The Author’s Many Voices

II. General Rules, I: “True Novels Must Be Realistic”

From Justified Revolt to Crippling Dogma

From Differentiated Kinds to Universal Qualities

General Criteria in Earlier Periods

Three Sources of General Criteria: The Work, the Author, the Reader

Intensity of Realistic Illusion

The Novel as Unmediated Reality

On Discriminating among Realisms

The Ordering of Intensities

III. General Rules, II: “All Authors Should Be Objective”

Neutrality and the Author’s “Second Self”

Impartiality and “Unfair” Emphasis

Impassibilité

Subjectivism Encouraged by Impersonal Techniques

IV. General Rules, III: “True Art Ignores the Audience”

“True Artists Write Only for Themselves”

Theories of Pure Art

The “Impurity” of Great Literature

Is a Pure Fiction Theoretically Desirable?

V. General Rules, IV: Emotions, Beliefs, and the Reader’s Objectivity

“Tears and Laughter Are, Aesthetically, Frauds”

Types of Literary Interest (and Distance)

Combinations and Conflicts of Interests

The Role of Belief

Belief Illustrated: The Old Wives’ Tale

VI. Types of Narration

Person

Dramatized and Undramatized Narrators

Observers and Narrator-Agents

Scene and Summary

Commentary

Self-Conscious Narrators

Variations of Distance

Variations in Support or Correction

Privilege

Inside Views

PART II: THE AUTHOR’S VOICE IN FICTION

VII. The Uses of Reliable Commentary

Providing the Facts, Picture, or Summary

Molding Beliefs

Relating Particulars to the Established Norms

Heightening the Significance of Events

Generalizing the Significance of the Whole Work

Manipulating Mood

Commenting Directly on the Work Itself

VIII. Telling as Showing: Dramatized Narrators, Reliable and Unreliable

Reliable Narrators as Dramatized Spokesmen for the Implied Author

“Fielding” in Tom Jones

Imitators of Fielding

Tristram Shandy and the Problem of Formal Coherence

Three Formal Traditions: Comic Novel, Collection, and Satire

The Unity of Tristram Shandy

Shandean Commentary, Good and Bad

IX. Control of Distance in Jane Austen’s Emma

Sympathy and Judgment in Emma

Sympathy through Control of Inside Views

Control of Judgment