[Dragaera] narrative time in FHYA and The Hobbit

[Philip Hart]

On Sat, 29 Nov 2008, Jerry Friedman wrote:

> --- On Sat, 11/29/08, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

>> she has proceeded along her route.  This reflects the onrush of events 
>> in the novel, as pointed out in the intro to the Text.
>>
>> has good aim, and can in fact do lots of things that "I
>> haven't had time to tell you about.  There is no time
>> now."  And in chapter 18 he writes, "[Bilbo] was
>> aching in his bones for the homeward journey.  That,
>> however, was a little delayed,
>> so in the meantime I will tell something of events."
>> He goes on to catch us up on stuff that happened recently.
>
> So the similarity is not the order of events and point of
> view, but the conceit that the narrator is limited by the
> time in which the events take place?

I'd put it as saying that the events are happening in a present
the reader partakes in with the narrator (though the past tense
is used).  In other parts of the Paarfiad this is not I think
the case - he can go on about whatever without impinging on
time as experienced.  And in _TLOTR_ there is no such intrusive
narrator iirc, as in the Vladiad there are only very occasional
reminders that Vlad is talking into a box.


>
>> This is not something that one would expect to find in a
>> Vlad narrative
>> I think.  I don't know quite what the difference is -
>> maybe that he
>> is relating things as he experienced them instead of
>> describing what happened.
>
> I think so.  Everything in the novels he narrates is in
> his point of view (even if the order is scrambled).  In
> /Orca/, he and Kiera spend a lot of time filling in
> what the other has missed, but there's no opportunity
> for the kind of thing you're talking about.  The closest
> thing may be in /Athyra/, where the bits in Rocza's
> point of view seem to fill in between the main narration
> in Savn's.


The Hobbit and Sethra are in the 3rd person omniscient, but with
a first person narrator on top - now that I come to think of it,
it's the interaction between the two that allows the above trick. 
Vlad does comment on his story, asking what the hearer knows or 
saying (approx.), "I'll tell you about my sheath sometime."
But there's no omniscience - the events aren't rolling out in
front of us, Vlad is saying x, then y, then z - 'everything only 
connected by "and" and "and."'  We don't experience [most of] the 
Vladiad as a movie, but as something related.  We're both farther
from the events and, because we empathize with Vlad, closer to them.

I'll have to think again about what's going on in _Orca_ and _Athyra_.
What if those weren't canonical?


(Incidentally, Alexx recently noted a bit of irony at the end of 
_Phoenix_ which was added retroactively as it were in _Orca_ -
the prophecy about Vlad's child being of little value.  [I had 
always thought of that as attaching to _O_ not _P_.]  Another
such is added by _Jhegaala_ to _Orca_ - Cawti says that at least
Vlad lost his finger in a relatively good way, when in fact the
opposite is true.  Maybe what V said about it in _O_ is literally 
true, which would make that statement very, uhh, weighted.)