Banfield, Ann. (1981). Reflective and Non-Reflective Consciousness in the Language of Fiction.

Poetics Today 2, 61-76.

REFLECTIVE AND NON-REFLECTIVE

CONSCIOUSNESS IN
THE LANGUAGE OF FICTION *
ANN BANFIELD
English, Berkeley

There is certainly further in me a certain passive faculty of perception, that is, of

receiving and recognizing the ideas of sensible things, but this would be useless to me
and I could in no way avail myself of it, if there were not either in me or in some other
thing another active faculty capable of forming and producing these ideas.
Descartes, Meditation IV: 191
One recent position on the style I call "represented speech and thought" holds
that it is characterized by a merging of two voices - narrator's and character's.
The major evidence for what I call the "dual voice"' theory of represented
thought consists of sentences exhibiting what Pascal (1977: 107) calls "an
intertwining of objective and subjective statement, of narratorial account and
free indirect speech." The assumption - never made explicit - underlying the
dual voice position is that there is a clearly defined notion of linguistic material
which cannot represent a character's consciousness and which must present a
narrator's "objective" point of view. This is to be contrasted with "subjective"
linguistic material. This latter category has been explicitly identified in Banfield
(1973). There it is used to justify a formal theory of represented speech and
thought where the highest S or "E" can contain only one point of view or
"SELF." This is expressed in the following principle:
1 E/1 SELF. For every nonembeddable sentence or "Expression," there is a unique
referent, called the SELF, to whom all expressive elements are attributed.
* Paper presented at Synopsis 2: "Narrative Theory and Poetics of Fiction," an international
symposium held at the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University, and the
Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation, 16-22 June 1979.
' The term "dual voice" comes from the title of Pascal's book on
represented speech and
thought (1977). He introduces the term as follows: "in his [Thibaudet's] comment on the
sergeant's voice he is suggesting that SIL [represented speech and thought] bears a double
intonation, that of the character and that of the narrator, that it is, in fact, a dual voice" (18).
As we shall see, the two "voices" proposed by this theory always include as one the narrator's
voice, i.e., represented speech and thought is never seen as combining two characters' voices.
? Poetics
Today, Vol. 2:2 (1981), 61-76

62

ANN BANFIELD

But the category of "objective" linguistic material, so crucial to the dual voice
position, has never been precisely defined, although it is continuously invoked
on the intuitive level. Narrative statements describing a character's actions,
especially when in a vocabulary the character would not use in dialogue,
presumably adopt a point of view outside the character's own; likewise, a
descriptive noun phrase or a proper noun referring to the character could not
represent the character's own consciousness of himself but must originate in an
outside source. The relevant descriptive statements and phrases are, it is
apparently assumed, intuitively recognizable.
There are no objections to postulating the existence of a style - i.e., of a kind
of sentence - which eliminates the linguistic features of subjectivity and also
exhibits identifying linguistic traits unique to it. This is essentially Benveniste's
(1966) claim for the stylistic category histoire, whose linguistic features have been
further treated in Banfield (1979). It is when a complete sentence (E) combines
features of both a subjective and an objective style that a problem is raised for a
theory maintaining the empirical validity of 1 E/1 SELF. According to the
proponents of the dual voice position, the sentences of (1) are counter-examples
to 1 E/1 SELF because they seem to combine a narrative statement, which is
taken to imply a narrator's voice, but contain phrases or words (the embeddable
italicized constructions in (1)) only attributable to a character (a-c are taken from
defenders of dual voice).
(1) a. This time she managed to re-fasten her veil (Conrad, cited in Dillon and
Kirchhoff, 1976: 434-5)
b. elle aimait la brebis malade, le sacr6 coeur perc6 de fl&ches aigues, ou le
pauvre Jesus qui tombe en marchant sur sa croix (Flaubert, Madame Bovary,
cited in Perruchot, 1975: 260)
c. She had conceived her first passion, and the object of it was her governess. It
hadn't been put to her, and she couldn't, or at any rate, didn't, put it to herself,
that she liked Miss Overmore better than she liked papa; but it would have
sustained her under such an imputation to feel herself able to reply that papa
too liked Miss Overmore exactly as much. He had particularly told her so.
Besides she could easily see it. (Henry James, What Maisie Knew, cited in
Cohn, 1978: 47)
d. Ce pauvre diable d'ouvrier, perdu sur les routes, l'interressait. (Zola,
Germinal, 30)
e. On devait, disait-il, trouver la de l'or a la pelle. L'id6e 6tait juste. Seulement,
le million y avait passe et cette damnee crise allaient lui donner raison. (ibid.:
80)
f. Catherine ne put que gifler son frere, la petite galopait deja avec une
bouteille. Ces satanes enfants finiraient au bagne. (ibid.: 150)
Les
camarades le regardaient, remues, ayant quelque part en eux l'echo de ce
g.
qu'il leur disait... (ibid.: 316)
h. En tout cas, monsieur 6tait prevenu, elle preferait flanquer son diner au feu,
si elle le ratait, a cause de la revolution. (ibid.: 343)
"The point of view" in (Ic), for instance, "is clearly Maisie's, but the language
is elaborately Jamesian; with the single exception of the word 'papa' not a single

REFLECTIVEAND NON-REFLECTIVE
CONSCIOUSNESS

63

phrase corresponds to a child's idiom" (Cohn, 1978: 47). Likewise for the other
examples in (1); in every case a subjective word or phrase ascribable to a
character - deictics like this, ce, cette and ces in (la, d, e, and f) respectively,
kinship terms like papa in (Ic) and camarades in (lg) and the similar monsieurin
(lh), subjective or evaluative adjectives like pauvre in (lb and d), satanees in (If),
damnee in (le) and what Milner (1978) calls "noms de qualit6" like ce diable
d'ouvrierin (Id) - is contained in a sentence whose vocabulary and syntax does
not transcribe the character's train of thoughts in any direct way.
In Banfield (1978), I have demonstrated that the sentences of (1) cannot be
said to contain a SELF distinct from the character and, hence, are narratorless,
since any narrator is to be equated with the linguistic notion SELF. The choice of
language is attributable to the author and not a narrator. This is the language in
which thought is represented by the novelist. Therefore, the examples of (1) do
not constitute counter-evidence to 1 E/1 SELF.
However, the relation between sentences like those in (1) and the classic
examples of represented speech and thought, where consciousness is
represented in its full expressivity, has yet to be defined. According to Pascal
(1977: 107), there is no "definable line" between such sentences and the "more
declared forms" of represented thought. If the two are related, their relation can
only be seen as a continuum from the purely objective to the purely subjective,
and the existence of sentences like those of (1) renders suspect a formal account
of represented speech and thought itself. This style, it is concluded, is not
"a linguistically identifiable phenomenon" (Culler, 1978:612); it "cannot
be defined purely in formal terms" (Bronzwaer, paraphrased in Dillon and
Kirchhoff, 1976: 433). "Nous ne parviendrons a l'approcher que si nous
renongons a le faire entrer sous le boisseau de I'unite, logique ou synthetique,
celle de l'etre ou celle du sujet, celle de la forme ou celle du sens" (Perruchot,
1975: 254).
It is not the classic examples of represented speech and thought which,
according to the dual voice position, escape formal definition. Rather, its
defenders insist that the sentences of (1) must be included in the formal account
of the style but that any attempt to do so meets with failure. But might not the
inability to define the sentences of (1) in formal terms only describe the impasse
reached by the proponents of the dual voice position? The inability of research to
discover a formal solution to an empirical problem should not too soon be taken
as an inherent property of the object of inquiry. For a systematic account of
represented speech and thought and sentences like those in (1) we require a
conceptualization which allows for relating both on the basis of precisely
identifiable shared features but one which explains their obvious differences.
1. THE EPISTEMOLOGICALDISTINCTIONBETWEEN REFLECTIVEAND
NON-REFLECTIVECONSCIOUSNESS
The necessary generalization which permits an explanatory account of sentences
representing consciousness, including those of (1), is the distinction between two
levels of consciousness. Following Kuroda (1976), I will call the former

64

ANN BANFIELD

"reflective" and the other "nonreflective" or "spontaneous" consciousness.

Actually, this distinction is not without precedent in philosophy. Indeed, we find
the same distinction operative in two thinkers from entirely different traditions.
Russell (1940) maintains that in addition to full intellectual knowledge "there is
an important sense in which you can know anything that is in your present
sensible field" (47) and that "there is some sense in which we can know them
[present sensible facts] without using words" (54). Sartre (1943) distinguishes the
prereflective cognito from the reflective cognito, "unreflective" (or "non-thetic")
"The cognito is only the manifestation of
and "reflective" consciousness.
consciousness. In knowing I am conscious of knowing. If we refuse to consider
consciousness as immediately reflective, that is to say, as a knowledge of
knowledge, which would require a regress to infinity (it is the idea of an idea of
Spinoza), we will see perhaps that it is not a knowledge turned back upon itself,
but the dimension of being of the subject" ("Consciousness of Self and
Knowledge of Self," in Readings in Existential Phenomenology, 114).
Let us consider briefly these two presentations of the notion of two levels of
consciousness. While difficult to make precise, we all intuit some difference in
the processes or events we describe by the phrases "being conscious or aware
of (noticing)" and "knowing." As Russell says, "It is necessary [...] to
distinguish between experiences that we notice and others that merely happen to
us" (49). He gives the following as an example:
Suppose you are out walking on a wet day, and you see a puddle and avoid it. You are
not likely to say to yourself: "there is a puddle; it will be advisable not to step into it."
But if somebody said "why did you suddenly step aside?" you would answer
"because I didn't wish to step into that puddle." You know, retrospectively, that you
had a visual perception [...] and [...] you express this knowledge in words. But what
would you have known, and in what sense, if your attention had not been called to the
matter by the questioner? [...] Can one remember what one never knew? That
depends upon the meaning of the word "know" (p. 49).
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre's example is similar (p. 13):
[...] this spontaneous consciousness of my perception is constitutiveof my perceptive
consciousness. In other words, every positional consciousness of an object is at the
same time a non-positional consciousness of itself. If I count the cigarettes which are
in that case, I have the impression of disclosing an objective property of this
collection of cigarettes: they are a dozen. This property appears to my consciousness
as a property existing in the world. It is very possible that I have no positional
consciousness of counting them. Then I do not know myself as counting. Proof of this
is that children who are capable of making an addition spontaneously cannot explain
subsequently how they set about it. Piaget's tests, which show this, constitute an
excellent refutation of the formula of Alain - To know is to know that one. Yet at
the moment when these cigarettes are revealed to me as a dozen, I have a non-thetic
consciousness of my adding activity. If anyone questioned me, indeed, if anyone
should ask, "What are you doing there?" I should reply at once, "I am counting."
This reply aims not only at the instantaneous consciousness which I can achieve by
reflection but at those fleeting consciousnesses, which have passed without being

REFLECTIVEAND NON-REFLECTIVE
CONSCIOUSNESS

65

reflectedon, those which are forevernot-reflected-onin my immediatepast. Thus

reflectionhas no kind of primacyover the consciousnessreflected-on.It is not
reflectionwhichrevealsthe consciousnessreflected-onto itself.Quitethe contrary,it
is the non-reflectiveconsciousnesswhich rendersthe reflectionpossible;there is a
pre-reflectivecognitowhichis the conditionof the Cartesiancogito.At the sametime
it is the non-theticconsciousnessof countingwhichis the veryconditionof my actof
adding.If it were otherwise,how would the additionbe the unifyingtheme of my
consciousness?In order that this theme should preside over a whole series of
synthesesof unificationsand recognitions,it mustbe presentto itself,not as a thing
but as an operative intention which can exist only as the revealing-revealed
(revelante-revelee), to use an expressionof Heidegger's.Thusin orderto count,it is
necessaryto be consciousof counting.
In both the avoiding of the puddle and the act of addition, as Russell and
Sartre argue, there must be a conscious awareness on the part of the subject, but
this consciousness is not fully reflective. The subject is spontaneously aware of
what he is doing, but he is not simultaneously thinking "I am doing
such-and-such." The line between the non-reflective and the reflective level is
similarly evoked for Russell's puddle and Sartre's cigarettes. In both cases, it is
the subject's being asked what he is doing which forces consciousness to become
reflective. The request for linguistic information is the catalyst. For to speak of
something always implies reflective consciousness of it. The very fact that the
subject can answer when so questioned is evidence that a consciousness of the act
(and it is not just the puddle or the cigarettes that the subject is conscious of, but
the act of avoiding the one or counting the other) did previously exist. As Sartre
puts it, "It is not reflection which reveals the consciousness reflected-on to itself"
but "the non-reflective consciousness which renders the reflection possible ..."
The question demands an act of memory, and memory verifies the previous
non-reflective conscious state which makes memory possible. "You know,
retrospectively, you had a visual perception" and "you express this knowledge in
words" (Russell, 1940: 49).
2. THE SYNTACTIC DISTINCTION BETWEEN REFLECTIVE AND NONREFLECTIVECONSCIOUSNESS
Is there linguistic evidence to support this abstract distinction? In fact, it is
reflected in the very syntax of narrative. When we examine the sentences of
narrative, we find one general category of sentences representing consciousness.
These include sentences of represented thought, but also other sentences which
represent mental states such as sense perceptions. Some commentators assume
these "represented perceptions" are cases of represented thought, for they share
grammatical properties with this style. But, upon closer inspection, we find
differences among the sentences representing consciousness, differences whose
distribution follows the intuitive distinction between reflective and nonreflective consciousness. Concentrating initially on represented perceptions as
the type of non-reflective consciousness, I will identify the features they share
with represented thought in Zola before isolating the differences between the
two types of sentences representing consciousness in 2.2.

66

ANN BANFIELD

2.1. The Syntactic Propertiesof Sentences Representing Consciousness

2.1.1. Tense
Represented perceptions share with represented thought the characteristic use
of the past tense (the imparfait in French and the past or past progressive in
English) with present or future time deictics, as in (2).
(2) The pear tree before Mrs. Littlejohn's was like drowned silver now in the moon.
(William Faulkner, The Hamlet, 459)
They now saw, tied to the fence, Ratcliff's buckboard and team. (ibid.: 459)
Now he was crossing the bridge over the Serpentine. (Virginia Woolf, The Years:267)
Maintenant, il entendait les moulineurs pousser les trains sur les treteaux, il
distinguait des ombres vivantes culbutant les berlines, pres de chaque feu. (Germinal,
8)
Aujourd'hui, avec leurs allures gargonnieres d'artistes, elles tenaient la bourse,
rognaient sur les sous, querellaient les fournisseurs, retapaient sans cesse leurs
toillettes, arrivaient enfin a rendre decente la gene croissante de la maison. (ibid.: 282)

The shift from aorist to imparfait which is generally taken as a sign of a

shift to represented thought in French may be in some cases a shift from a
SELFless E to one representing a third person consciousness where only the
SELF's perceptions are recorded. That is, sentences where PAST, which I use to
designate the past tenses, is cotemporal with NOW, the moment designated by
the present and future deictics, may describe phenomena - scenes, sounds,
events - which can be interpreted as the data of the SELF's senses instead of the
linguistic representation of his reflections. But they can be so read only when the
choice of tense permits it. For instance, the shift in (3a) from aorist to imparfait
permits a reading where Emma Bovary's and Mme Arnoux's perceptions are
represented in the imparfait; but this reading, as I argue elsewhere, is not
possible in (3b), where the tense remains the aorist. Only the imparfait,of course,
permits NOW.
(3) a. Emma mit un chale sur ses epaules, ouvrit la fenetre et s'accouda. La nuit etait
noire. Quelques gouttes de pluie tombaient (maintenant). (Mme Bovary, 87)
Mme Aroux suffoquait un peu. Elle s'approcha de la fenetre pour respirer.
De l'autre c6te de la rue, sur le trottoir, un emballeur en manches de
chemise clouait une caisse. (Maintenant) des fiacres passaient. (L'Education

Sentimentale,281)

b. Emma mit un chale sur ses epaules, ouvrit la fenetre et s'accouda. La nuit fut
noire. Quelques gouttes de pluie tomberent (*maintenant).
Mme Arnoux's s'approcha de la fenetre pour respirer. De l'autre c6te de la
rue, sur le trottoir, un emballeur en manches de chemise cloua une caisse.
(*Maintenant) des fiacres passerent.

The use of the imparfait may suggest that the events or scene described are
phenomena perceived by the subject; but the aorist may not. Sentences with the
imparfaitmay represent what is seen through the subject's eyes or heard through
his ears. The same contrast exists in English between the past progressive and the
simple past, as shown in (4).

REFLECTIVE AND NON-REFLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

67

b. A few drops of rain fell (?now).

Iwere falling now.
b. A piano played (?now).
was playing now.

(4) a. Emma looked out the window.

a. She listened.

With the simple past, the events are simply narrated, with no suggestion of a
point of view; with the imparfait or past progressive, what is narrated becomes,
not just a description of events, but a representation of the character's perceiving
consciousness. English, however, also allows the simple past to be cotemporal
with NOW, i.e., with the act of consciousness; this is particularly the case with
stative verbs which cannot appear in the progressive. So we find representations
of perceptions in the simple past. The example in (5) is clearly not to be
interpreted as represented thought; the consciousness it represents remains
non-reflective, where the SELF is a preverbal infant.
(5) The little boy [...] grubbed. The flower blazed between the angles of the roots.
Membrane after membrane was torn. It blazed a soft yellow, a lambent light
under a film of velvet; it filled the canvas behind the eyes with light. All that inner
darkness became a hall, leaf smelling, earth smelling of yellow light. And the tree
was beyond the flower; the grass, the flower, and the tree were entire. Down on
his knees grubbing he held the flower complete. Then there was a roar and a hot
breath and a stream of coarse grey hair rushed between him and the flower. Up
he leapt, toppling in his fright, and saw coming towards him a terrible peaked
eyeless monster moving on legs, brandishing arms. (Virginia Woolf, Between the
Acts, 12-13)
With a first person narrative, sentences in the imparfait imply the speaker's
past experience of the events he recounts. The aorist does not, in contrast, imply
that the speaker perceived what he describes, although he might have.
A related linguistic feature which represented perceptions share with
represented thought is the use of the "shifted" modals could, should, would and
might where discourse would have can, shall, will and may. The passage in (6)
signals the representation of perceptions through shifted modals, as well as the
past progressive and the past.
(6) She sat up in bed and looked out through the slit of the blind. Through the gap she
could see a slice of the sky; then roofs; then the tree in the garden; then the backs
of houses opposite standing in a long row. One of the houses was brilliantly lit and
from the long open windows came dance music. They were waltzing. She saw
shadows twirling across the blind. (Virginia Woolf, The Years, 107)
he could see it now in the pedlar's box. (Eliot, Silas Marner, 114)
2.1.2. Embeddable Evaluative or Subjective Elements
The embeddable lexical items which are interpreted with reference to the SELF
and which in represented speech and thought may be attributable to a non-first
person may also be so attributed in representations of perceptions. These items
include deictics, evaluative adjectives like poor and fucking and kinship terms
like papa and comrade discussed in Banfield (1973) as well as the nouns Milner

68

ANN BANFIELD

(1978) calls "les noms de qualite." The sentences of represented perception in (7)
contain such items, which are italicized.
(7) Sara got up and went to the window. A crowd had gathered outside the public
house. A man was being thrown out. There he came, staggering. (Woolf, The
Years, 203)
This time she managed to re-fasten her veil.
The doctor came - a fat country practitioner, pleasant and kind. (D.H.
Lawrence, "England, My England," 318)
Poor Joyce, stretched out on a bed in the big closed motor-car - the mother
sitting by her head, the grandfather in his short grey beard and a bowler hat,
sitting by her feet, thick, and implacable in his responsibility - they rolled away
from Crockham, and from Egbert, who stood there bareheaded and a little
ignominious, left behind. (ibid.: 321)
Ce pauvre diable d'ouvrier,perdu sur les routes, l'interressait.
She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the living terra-cotta those
divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can ever stale. (E.M. Forster, A
Room with a View, 23)
It might, indeed. For at that moment Father turned towards her and said,
half-apologetically, stuffing the purse back, "I gave him a shilling." (Katherine
Mansfield, "Six Years After," 345)
Les camarades le regardaient, remues, ayant quelque part en eux l'6cho de ce
qu'il leur disait, cette ob6issance du soldat, la fraternit6 et la resignation dans le
danger.
As in the case of the cotemporality of PAST and NOW, the presence of such
lexical items or constructions mark the sentence as a representation of
consciousness.
2.2. The Syntactic Differences Between the Two Levels of Consciousness
There are, however, constructions which cannot occur in a representation of
consciousness without forcing it to be interpreted as reflective consciousness. A
sentence representing consciousness which lacks these constructions may be
but the
consciousness,
ambiguous between reflective and non-reflective
is only
it
and
the
constructions
sentence,
of
these
disambiguates
presence
consciousness.
it
as
reflective
to
understand
possible
2.2.1. Exclamations and other Non-Embeddable Expressive Constructions
The first such constructions are those generated leftmost under E in Banfield
(1973); only represented thought allows exclamations, for instance. (8a) can only
be read as reflective consciousness, while (8b) can be either reflective or
non-reflective.
(8) a. Quelques gouttes de pluie tombaient maintenant.
A few drops of rain were now falling.
b. Oui, quelques gouttes de pluie tombaient maintenant!
Yes, a few drops of rain were now falling!
2.2.2. Direct Questions
Similarly, a direct question where the PAST is cotemporal with NOW is only

REFLECTIVE AND NON-REFLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

interpretable as reflective consciousness.
possible readings of (9a) and (9b).

69

This can be verified by comparing the

(9) a. She was sitting there on that quiet steamer beside Father and at the same time
she was hushing and holding a little slender boy.
The air was now heavy with the fragrance of pittosporum.
Ils empechaient ces enrages-la de s'embrocher.
Cet 6cervele de Paul etait en train de la cacher.
b. How was it possible that she was sitting there on that quiet steamer beside
Father and at the same time she was hushing and holding a little slender boy so pale - who had just waked out of a dreadful dream? (K. Mansfield, "Six
Years After," 347)
Was the air heavy with the fragrance of pittosporum, or was it jasmine? She
could not decide which.
Et comment empecher ces enrages-la de s'embrocher eux-memes?
(Germinal, 407)
Ou diable cet 6cervele de Paul avait-il bien pu la fourrer? (ibid.: 327)
To ask oneself a question is to bring the content of the question to the level of
reflection; this observation, recorded in both Russell and Sartre, is reflected in
our interpretation of interrogative sentences.
2.2.3. Parentheticals
Thirdly, when a parenthetical is added to a sentence interpretable as the
representation of a perception, it has the same affect as the addition of an
exclamation: the sentence must be read as represented thought, i.e., as reflective
consciousness. The sentences in (10) without the parentheticals are ambiguous
between reflective and non-reflective consciousness; with the parentheticals,
they can only be read as represented thought.
(10) A few drops of rain were falling, she realized.
Des fiacres passaient, elle se souvint.
The whole of life did not consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought,
returning to Scott and Balzac, to the Enlightenment and the French novel.
(Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 139)
The crucial role the parenthetical plays in establishing a sentence representing
consciousness
as represented thought, i.e., as reflective consciousness,
is
recognized by Pascal in the passage already cited, for he notes that sentences of
what we are calling "non-reflective consciousness" "could not be
prefaced by
'she said,' 'she thought,' etc." (1977: 107)
The difference the presence of the parenthetical plays is most apparent when
the parenthetical verb is a perception verb. (Only see and feel can
appear.)
Perception verbs can only metaphorically imply reflective consciousness; when
they occur in parentheticals, they must have this metaphoric meaning.
(11) A few drops of rain were falling, she saw.
The wind was cold, she felt.
"It was raining, she saw," means not that she saw it raining, but that she

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ANN BANFIELD

discovered or realized that it was raining. Thus, in (12) saw represents her
reflections.
(12) Paul could choose the lesser in place of the higher he saw (Lawrence, Sons and
Lovers, 244).
2.2.4. Parenthetical Verbs of Reflective Consciousness
Fourthly, the class of those verbs of consciousness which may appear in
parentheticals seems to coincide with few exceptions with the class of verbs
which imply reflective consciousness. We saw in the last section that verbs of
perception may appear in parentheticals only if they have a figurative,
"reflective" meaning. Verbs representing other non-reflective mental states like
feelings or emotions and sensations are also barred from parentheticals:
(13) ?It hurt on her left side, she felt.=
She felt that it hurt on her left side. #
She felt the pain on her left side.
*The perfume of the iris was heavy, she smelt.
*They would arrive at six, he heard. (Only acceptable with the parenthetical
interpreted as part of the speech represented, i.e., as an equivalent of the
discourse parenthetical "I hear.")
*Oh what a beautiful morning, she liked.
*The flowers were perfect, he loved.
The eggs would break, he was *anxious/sure
The play would be a hit, the director was certain/convinced.
*eager/glad/sad/happy/aware.
*irritated/uncertain/confused.
An interesting case can be seen in the following contrast:
(14) The cake was still in the oven, he remembered.
l *forgot.
L?hadforgotten.
It is difficult to say whether forgetting is a conscious state or the absence of one;
but if it is a conscious state, it is certainly non-reflective.
2.2.5. Noun Phrases Referring to the SELF
Finally, noun phrases referring to the SELF behave differently in representaand in represented
tions of perceptions
thought. In the sentence of
NP
to
the
SELF must be a pronoun; in
referring
represented thought, any
of
conscious states in
of
non-reflective
perceptions (and
representations
as long as the
NP
to
the
refer
SELF,
may
general), any appropriate
to the
information
unknown
not
or
does
present
description
appellation
SELF. This restriction on represented thought is pointed out in Reinhart
(1975): for what she calls "parenthetical subject oriented sentences contain(i.e., represented
speech and thought), backwards
ing parentheticals"
anaphora is obligatory (p. 138). She gives the examples in (15) and (16),
which contrast with the discourse parenthetical in (17).

REFLECTIVE AND NON-REFLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

71

(15) Hei would be late, Johni said.

(16) *John, would be late, hei said.
(17) John, will be late, he, said.
Whatever the status of (17), the data of (15) and (16) seem unquestionable. Yet to exclude (16) would require an ad hoc modification of the general
rules for anaphora, which in general allow a free anaphora to the right of an
antecedent whenever both are not in the same clause (cf. Lasnik, 1976). But
here such an account does not seem justified. It is not the coreferentiality
relation of the NP in the parenthetical and one in the E of represented
speech that is crucial. "SELFhood" is the determining factor for predicting
which NP in represented speech and thought is obligatorily pronominalized.
We must take "anaphora" as including not just the relation between two
linguistically realized NP's, one a pronoun and the other its "antecedent,"
but also that between a linguistically realized NP and the SELF of the E
containing it. Thus, the fact that the speaker and the addressee/hearer can
never be realized as other than a pronoun follows from the general principle
that the SELF enters into no structural (tree-based) relation with phrases in
an Expression. Therefore, the speaker (as SELF) and the addressee-hearer
are necessarily represented in an anaphoric relation to the SELF.
But now we note that the non-reflective SELF may appear as a proper
noun; this includes the subject of the parenthetical verb. In narratives, we
find sentences like those in (18).
(18) a. A conversation then ensued, not on unfamiliar lines. Miss Bartlett was,
after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the morning
settling in; unless Lucy would at all like to go out? Lucy would rather
like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but, of course, she could
go alone. Miss Bartlett could not allow this. Of course she would
accompany Lucy everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy would stop with her
cousin. Oh no! that would never do! Oh yes! (Forster,. A Room with a
View, 20)
b. He would be going to Saint-Moritz again in August - could Marcel come
too? (Painter, Marcel Proust, 159)
c. Although Berthe Young was thirty she still had moments like this when
she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the
pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it
again, or to stand still and laugh at nothing - at nothing, simply.
(Katherine Mansfield, "Bliss," 145)
d. He stopt again, rose again, and seemed quite embarrassed - He was
more in love with her than Emma had supposed. (Jane Austen, Emma,
265)
e. Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out
of that and not get on her nerves no hour to be out and the little brats of
twins. (Joyce, Ulysses, 351)
In (18a, c, d, and e), the SELF is represented by a proper noun in
non-reflective consciousness, although the sentence may pass into reflective
consciousness, as in (18a and c). In the latter case, however, the proper noun

72

ANN BANFIELD

may not appear in the clause which is interpreted reflectively: "when she
wanted to [...] laugh at nothing - at nothing, simply" (the repetition at the
end is non-embeddable). Such is not the case for the proper noun used for
the addressee/hearer, as in (18a and b): "unless Lucy would at all like to go out?"
(18a and b) are, of course, representations of speech. It might be
considered surprising that speech can be represented as non-reflective
consciousness, since we have already seen that speech implies reflection.
Sentences like (18a and b) have the consistent structure of non-reflective
consciousness in never allowing the expressive elements generated in the
leftmost position directly under E or parentheticals to appear with the
proper noun for the SELF or ADDRESSEE/HEARER. If such elements
are inserted, it becomes difficult to read "Miss Bartlett" as the SELF (i.e.,
the represented speaker):
(19) Yes, Miss Bartlett was, after all, a wee bit tired.
*Miss Bartlett, was a wee bit tired, she said (cf. with 16).
(The direct question, however, may appear with a nominal
ADDRESSEE/HEARER, as in 18b.)
What the appearance of sentences like (18a and b) shows is that the
notion of non-reflective consciousness is, finally, a syntactic one and suggests
that future research should explore its syntactic relation to sentences of pure
narration, instead of seeing its significance exhausted by the semantic
distinction between reflection and non-reflection.
The data presented here thus suggest a distinction between a reflective
and a non-reflective SELF. A pronoun is coreferential with the reflective
SELF, while a proper noun (or pronoun) may refer to the non-reflective
SELF. 1E/1 SELF applies to both, and thus assigns sentences of nonreflective consciousness a point of view. Furthermore, in a passage
representing consciousness, a reflective and a non-reflective SELF may be
coreferential. Only the reflective SELF is restricted to a pronoun realization,
and the SPEAKER is always a reflective SELF.
It is significant that the NP referring to the non-reflective SELF is limited,
however, to a proper noun. Descriptive noun phrases like "the grizzled old
veteran," "the old tarpaulin," "that much injured but on the whole
even-tempered person" or "the quaker librarian" cannot refer to the SELF
in a sentence of non-reflective consciousness. It is even questionable whether
such descriptive noun phrases may occur as the subject of parentheticals
accompanying represented speech or thought. The examples given above all
occur in parentheticals accompanying direct speech: "the grizzled old
veteran interrogated" (Ulysses, 625), "the old tarpaulin corroborated" (625),
"that much injured but on the whole even-tempered person declared" (627),
and "the quaker librarian asked" (207). The proper name is the name the
SELF knows himself by, as opposed to such descriptive phrases. The
principle governing this seems to be that the relation between the SELF and
an NP in non-reflective consciousness is not one of anaphora, but rather that

REFLECTIVEAND NON-REFLECTIVE
CONSCIOUSNESS

73

the S of non-reflective consciousness contains material only of the SELF's

spontaneous conscious knowledge. (Note that the parenthetical accompanying reflective represented thought is itself non-reflective, and a non-reflective
S does not enter into an anaphoric relation itself.) This knowledge is what
the SELF "knows," in that other sense of know where one does not
necessarily know that one knows or what Chomsky might call "consciously
cognize."
3. SENTENCES REPRESENTING CONSCIOUSNESSIN NARRATION
We are now prepared to give a full account of narrative sentences said to
contain the "double presence of character and narrator" (Pascal, 1977: 21),
like those in (1). We need only extend the notion of non-reflective
consciousness to other mental states and acts besides perception. Not to do
so would be missing a generalization, since sentences representing other
non-reflective mental states like beliefs and feelings resemble represented
perceptions syntactically. Relevant examples are, in fact, the sentences of
(1). There is no reason why "she managed to re-fasten her veil" or "elle
aimait" must be interpreted as pure narrative description from outside the
consciousness of the character. In certain cases (where, for instance, tense is
not indicative that the subject is the SELF) such statements are neutral. But
they can be read from the subject's point of view, as representations of the
awareness of these states or actions - managing to fasten, loving - on the
part of the subject. Fastening and loving, the subject is aware of fastening
and loving. (Indeed, how else could this non-reflective or spontaneous
consciousness be represented linguistically other than as it is in (1)?) That
this view is correct is further corroborated by the fact that sentences such as
those in (20) can be rendered as represented thought, i.e., as reflective
consciousness, merely by the addition of those elements which are directly
attached to E - exclamations, parentheticals, sentences with root transformations like subject-auxiliary inversion.
(20) Had she actually managed to refasten her veil?
There, she managed to refasten her veil!
She f managed l to refastenherveil, she saw.
' had managed J
Est-ce qui'elle aimait vraimantla brebis malade?
Oui, elle aimait la brebis malade, le sacre coeur perce de fleches aiguis, ou
le pauvre Jesus qui tombe en marchantsur sa croix, pensa-t-elle. }
Imurmura-t-elle.
J
Indeed, the parenthetical itself may fall within the jurisdiction of
non-reflective consciousness. It represents an awareness on the part of the
parenthetical verb, but not necessarily a reflective awareness. For this
reason, the parenthetical subject may be a proper noun as well as a
pronoun. Further, the parenthetical verb in French narratives may appear in
either the aorist or the imparfait, the latter making a reading as reflective

ANN BANFIELD

74
consciousness
represented

possible. This is the phenomenon Charles Bally, who gave

thought its French name, called the "imparfait par attraction."

Le style indirect libre a pour effet d'etendre son action en dehors de l'enonce
des paroles ou des pensees, sur le verbe introducteur lui-meme; par une sorte de
construction ad sensum, ce verbe est attir6 par les verbes de l'6nonce et se met
au meme temps qu'eux. Le cas le plus clair de cette attraction est celui oi le
verbe est en incidente. Une phrase telle que: L'claireur acheva son rapport:
L'ennemi, dit-il, en terminant, sera l& dans deux heures ne donne lieu a aucune
remarque avec son style direct pur; notre expose du style indirect libre explique
egalement cette variante: ... L'ennemi, dit-il, serait la dans deux heures. Mais
comment juger celle-ci: ... L'ennemi, disait-il, serait la dans deux heures!
L'imparfait du verbe declaratif disait-il, ne s'explique, selon moi, que par
I'attraction decrite plus haut; englobe dans le texte du rapport, il en adopte la
syntaxe (1912: 599).

But, if the 1 E/1 SELF principle is correct, it is possible for narrative

exposition to adopt the character's perceiving consciousness only because it
has no other point of view. The tendency for narration itself to take on the
color of the consciousness to which it refers can also explain the earlier
noted fact that parentheticals accompanying represented speech and
thought, as opposed to those accompanying direct speech, seem to require
as their subject either a proper name or a pronoun and not descriptive
phrases like "the quaker librarian." This is because only the former may
co-refer with or refer to the non-reflective SELF.
In many narrative contexts, there is a progression from purely (objectively) narrated descriptions - often a sentence containing a verb of perception
or consciousness, in the aorist in French - to a shift to the representation
of a consciousness, first through non-reflective consciousness, often perceptions, and then through represented thought, as if the language of narrative
can quite naturally present some knowledge as passively coming through
experience, through sense data, and then as acted upon by the mind. In the

passage below from Flaubert's "Herodias," there is such a progression from

narrative
although
(21)

statement to represented perceptions to represented

narrative statements in the aorist reappear throughout.

thought,

Un matin, avant le jour, le Tetrarque Herode-Antipas vint s'y accouder, et

regarda.
Les montagnes, imm6diatement sous lui, commencaient a decouvrir leurs
crates, pendant que leur masse, jusqu'au fond des abimes, etait encore dans
l'ombre. Un brouillard flottait, il se d6chira, et les contours de la mer Morte
apparurent. L'aube, qui se levait derriere Machaerous, epandait une
rougeur. Elle illumina bient6t les sables de la greve, les collines, le desert,
et, plus loin, tous les monts de la Judee, inclinant leurs surfaces raboteuses
et grises. Engaddi, au milieu, tracait une barre noire; Hebron, dans

l'enfoncement,s'arrondissaiten d6me; Esquol avait des grenadiers,Sorek

des vignes, Karmeldes champsde sesame; et la tour Antonia, de son cube
monstrueux, dominait Jerusalem. Le Tetrarque en detourna la vue pour

REFLECTIVEAND NON-REFLECTIVE
CONSCIOUSNESS

75

contempler,a droite, les palmiersde Jericho; et il songea aux autres villes

de sa Galilee: Capharnaiim,Endor, Nazareth, Tiberias ou peut-etre il ne
reviendraitplus. Cependant le Jourdaincoulait sur la plaine aride. Toute
blanche, elle 6blouissait comme une nappe de neige. Le lac, maintenant,
semblait en lapis-lazuli;et a sa pointe m6ridionale,du c6t6 de 1'Yemen,
Antipas reconnut ce qu'il craignaitd'apercevoir.Des tentes brunes 6taient
dispers6es;des hommes avec des lances circulaiententre les chevaux,et des
feux s'6teignantbrillaientcomme des etincelles a ras du sol.
C'etaient les troupes du roi des Arabes, dont il avait r6pudi6la fille pour
prendre H&rodias,mari6e a l'un de ses freres, qui vivait en Italie, sans
pretentions au pouvoir.
Antipas attendait les secours des Romains;et Vitellius, gouverneurde la
Syrie, tardant a paraitre, il se rongeait d'inqui6tudes.
Agrippa, sans doute, l'avait ruine chez l'Empereur?(133-5)
It is this combination of sentences - pure narration, the representation of
non-reflective consciousness and represented speech and thought which,
finally, is what constitutes narrative fiction linguistically. The balance of
these various kinds of sentences in any given text is a matter of individual
style. As has long been recognized, Flaubert prefers the representation of
non-reflective consciousness over represented thought. This is entirely
consonant with the kind of characters Flaubert portrays - what Henry
James called "weak vessels." As Leo Bersani notes of Emma Bovary,
"during much of the narrative" she "is nothing more than bodily surfaces
and intense sensations." On the other hand, Virginia Woolf's novels show a
preponderance of reflective consciousness.
The revelations our analysis of represented perceptions has led to can
even allow us to clarify our conception of represented thought as well. In
distinguishing between the representation of reflective and that of nonreflective consciousness, we implied that the former comes much closer to
what the character would have said himself. Yet I point out elsewhere that
represented thought does not present consciousness as inner speech. The
proper formulation requires that we characterize represented thought as
language representing what the character would have felt and thought
reflectively, whereas non-reflective consciousness is rendered in a language
which captures what the character perceives or knows spontaneously. In
both cases, however, language must represent what is not linguistic - i.e.,
consciousness.
It is a mistaken and simplistic approach to the complex problem of the
representation of a fictional reality in language which equates such language
with either communication or the direct expression of a speaker's or
narrator's point of view, as the dual voice position does. For such an
approach operates with a vague analogy to what is itself, without a rich
linguistic theory, a poorly understood notion - speaker meaning. What
makes such an approach ultimately of so little consequence for narrative
theory is that it has nothing to say about the differentia specifica of fictional
language. It is only by trying to find a theoretical account for the data as it

76

ANN BANFIELD

occurs, instead of by forcing the data into a preconceived schema, that

literary theory can return from linguistic research and analysis with new
discoveries. The data uniquely provided by narrative fiction are the language for
the representation of consciousness, both reflective and non-reflective.

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Romanische Monatsschrift (Heidelberg).

BANFIELD, ANN, 1973. "Narrative Style and the Grammar of Direct and Indirect Speech, "

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1978 "The Formal Coherence of Represented Speech and Thought," PTL 3, 289-314.
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BENVENISTE,EMILE, 1966. Problemes de linguistique generale (Paris: Gallimard).
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