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Soviet Semiotics A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form by Boris Uspensky;

Valentina Zavarin; Susan Wittig Review by: Joan Dagle NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Autumn, 1975), pp. 77-80 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1345028 . Accessed: 21/04/2012 09:21
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Soviet Semiotics
BORIS

A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form, trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. xvii + 181, $9.00.
USPENSKY,

The translation of Boris Uspensky's recent book is a major event for American theorists of fiction. The significance of Uspensky's work is twofold: in its own right, A Poetics of Composition offers a formidable methodology and typology for describing point of view structures in narrative; it also arises out of and furthers a particular critical tradition that is only just becoming known to American critics. I refer not to the general movements of Russian formalism, Prague linguistics, and French structuralism, but specifically to a vital concern on the part of Soviet literary critics, trained in linguistics and semiotics, with the aesthetics of point of view-a concern that stretches back to the 1920's. Uspensky draws on the preliminary notions of Vinogradov, Gukovsky, Voloshinov, and especially on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin who developed the notion of monological versus polyphonic point of view in Dostoevsky's novels. The date of Uspensky's predecessors is significant. While Anglo-American critics were busily absorbing Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction and subsequently devoting decades to the articulation and modification of the "Jamesian aesthetic," the Russians were (characteristically) doing something related but different. For the past twenty years or so we have been challenging the Jamesians on the grounds of normative evaluation: don't judge the conventions of Victorian fiction by post-Victorian standards; some of us actually prefer Fielding and Dickens in their garrulousness to more modern fiction. The apotheosis of this tradition and debate was, of course, Wayne Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction. The point is that even in rejecting the conclusions of the Jamesian argument, we have held fast to the terms of that argument. We still conceptualize "point of view" as a fairly self-evident matter: omniscient author-narrator, dramatized first-person narrator, center of consciousness (effaced author), multiple perspectives. Our refinements of the notion of point of view have been limited to articulating the often subtle differences between author and narrator and to recognizing that a discrepancy may exist between the perceiver and the speaker. Uspensky conceives of point of view as a position from which the narration is conducted, a mode of description of the object (character or event) in any representational art (or "semantic art"-having a plane of expression and a plane of content). While this definition seems familiar enough, its implications are actually far-reaching. Uspensky does not apply his notions of position and mode to the describing of large constructs in a narrative (e.g. the creation of an omniscient narrator in Tom Jones or of a first-person dramatized narrator in The Great Gatsby). Rather, his semiotic training leads him to be as atomistic as possible: one can discern shifting structures of point of view in a sentence or a word. Point of view is, for him, the very essence of composition. He sees relatively monolithic structures of point of view as evidence of simplistic (often primitive) narrative forms. The primary focus of his study is on discerning structures of point of view in nineteenth-century realistic fiction, and his

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thesis is that in these works point of view is highly complex and perpetually shifting. Indeed, complexity of this sort becomes ultimately a tool of value judgment for him. The strengths and significanceof A Poetics of Compositionlie in Uspensky's broadening of our notion of point of view. And his claims for the importanceof a methodology that will allow minute and exact descriptions of point of view structures are formidable:
It is assumed that the structure of the artistic text may be described by investigating various points of view (different authorial positions from which the narration or description is conducted) and by investigating the relations between these points of view (their concurrence and nonconcurrence and the possible shifts from one point of view to another, which in turn are connected with the study of the function of the different points of view in the text).

Uspensky's methodology and typology are for the most part straightforward.He begins by asserting that point of view may be manifested on four "planes" (which are admittedly arbitraryand therefore open to qualificationor amplification).A separate chapter is devoted to each plane. Here is a brief description:
1. Point of view on the ideological plane. This plane concerns the evaluation of the world being described and thus, for Uspensky, is least accessible to formal study. The author may here assume the point of view of the author, the narrator, or a character. The compositional possibilities range from the subordination of all ideological points of view to a single dominating point of view, to complex combinations (juxtaposed or merged) of points of view. These possibilities are systematically set forth and means of expressing ideology are explored ("fixed epithets," phraseological characteristics of speech, etc.). 2. Point of view on the phraseological plane. This is an analysis of speech characteristics as indicators of changes in authorial position. There are fascinating sections on the nuances of the use of Russian names and of French in War and Peace. Uspensky analyzes the phenomena of reported speech, "quasi-direct discourse," and narrated monologue. 3. Point of view on the spatial and temporal planes. Here, point of view is tied to the notion of perspective. The typology of possible spatial relations between the describing subject and the described object is thorough and illuminating. Uspensky is somewhat less convincing in his analysis of the relations between temporal points of view, insisting on the metaphor of a retrospective position for authorial time. The texts he examines are limited to the nineteenth century, which accounts for his "conservative" approach. 4. Point of view on the plane of psychology. "Psychology" refers to the internal presentation of a character's perceptions (thoughts, feelings) versus the external pre-

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sentation of that character. This is the most systematically organized of the four planes, and the one in which Uspensky is most innovative. (He later asserts that a modal opposition between internal and external perspectives is the basic "law" of combinations of points of view manifested on each level.) He argues that external descriptions are characterized by special modal expressions of "estrangement" (e.g. it seemed, as if, evidently), while internal views are indicated formally by the lack means that on this plane omniscient points of view of such expressions-which must be classified as subjective points of view. In fact, in his articulation of internal versus external modes Uspensky performs a service for Anglo-American critics that in itself would justify his work: he purges our vocabulary of its tendency to express structural opposition in terms of an overall subjective-objective dichotomy. In the remaining three chapters Uspensky uses his typology of points of view manifested on the four planes to describe the possible compositional forms of artistic texts, in effect creating another typology (of larger units). This method of typological "hierarchies" is closely related to the method of structural linguistics. It is in these chapters that he finally deals with questions which I impatiently anticipated. In some cases, such as his brilliant treatment of the special types of nonconcurrence between points of view on two planes which not only result in but are shown to be necessary for the creation of irony, the impatience was worth suffering. (There is also a dazzling analysis of the structural effects of the nonconcurrence of the spatial-temporal point of view and the psychological point of view.) These final chapters also consider the ways in which point of view may be determined by the object of perception, the problem of the reader's point of view (which unfortunately concerns Uspensky only minimally), and the devices of background and frame in pictorial and verbal art. The lengthy treatment (42 pages) of the latter topic reveals one of the strengths of Uspensky's semiotic training. Throughout the text he makes use of references to aspects of point of view in other representational art forms (theater, film, etc.) primarily for the purpose of illumination-by-analogy, but here in this final chapter his extended treatment of devices common to forms of verbal and visual art suggests that there may be certain properties of composition common to any representational art. This chapter is a theoretical tour-de-force concerning the phenomenon of boundaries in representational works: the perceiver (reader or viewer) moves from an external to an internal back out to an external point of view with respect to the represented reality, and Uspensky suggests a not-quite exhaustive typology of the boundaries or frames that help effect (and may be necessary for) these transitions. All of these final chapters are provocative and open-ended. There is room for elaboration, modification, and new discoveries, and thus they fulfill one of criticism's major objectives. I am obviously impressed by many aspects of this book. However, there are inadequacies. Many are minor and unavoidable-unconvincing readings of certain texts, for example. As I indicated earlier, there are also problems with the organization of the book. Uspensky is hampered at times by his methodology: he postpones for many pages even mention of some issues until he has reached the "proper" level of typology, and this causes the reader a certain amount of page-flipping and the author needless

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reiteration. His range of texts is also limited. He draws primarily on the works of Dostoevsky and on War and Peace. This necessarily provokes suspicion: his notions of what constitutes point of view and of the devices for articulating points of view may be restricted by what he finds in nineteenth-century novels of social and psychological realism. There is little real discussion of other periods and other genres. A more serious objection is that the book never fulfills one of its initial promises: namely, that of providing a means of articulating the structure of an artistic text through analysis of point of view structures. By this I mean we never see Uspensky deal with an entire complex work, but only with segmented aspects. There is no summarizing analysis of the full complexity of the compositional form of War and Peace, for instance. The tendency toward atomization is never fully overcome and the generation of a complete notion of the structure of a text does not materialize. Furthermore, Uspensky is aware of certain theoretical issues that his text raises, generally of the epistemological and even "ontological" status of authors, narrators, characters-and even texts themselves, but refuses to discuss them because they are outside the scope of the methodology. Indeed, most of these limitations of A Poetics of Composition are self-imposed, due to Uspensky's rigid adherence to a rigid methodology against what I like to think are his "better" instincts. Nevertheless, the book is stimulating and rewarding. Future Anglo-American discussions of point of view will be improved by it and cannot afford to ignore it.
JOAN DAGLE, Brown

University

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