Literature

Abstract

Where in the world is language, and where in language is the world? Where, in other words, in another’s words, ‘is the place where language works?’¹ Without doubt, the whereabouts of literary beings are never simply geographical. Location is also a case of locution. For a literary being, language is their whole world. Whenever such a creature wonders where in their world they are, whether or not their question is throwaway, their question is a wonderfully literary one. From Jean Martle’s query in Henry James’s The Other House (1896) — ‘“Where am I?” her scared silence seemed for the moment to ask’ — to a character called Neary’s qualification of the question of ‘where?’ with ‘if and when’ in Samuel Beckett’s Murphy (1938), this is so.² In fiction, the distance or nearness of a narrative to a character is constantly in question. The narrative that tells us a character’s story may be in the first person, or in the third; second person perspectives are also of course possible if not as commonplace. But if with first person narrative we think of ourselves as being especially cosy with a character, then when such a narrative is told in the past tense the ‘I’ doing the telling is necessarily at a remove from the ‘I’ it tells us about. In third person narratives, meanwhile, we often find ourselves astonishingly close to a character’s most intimate feelings and thoughts, despite these being communicated by someone or something else — be that ‘else’ anonymous, omniscient, or otherwise.