direct naration

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Masa - 14 Jan 2010 03:54 GMT

He(Father) told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand,
or of aspiring superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon
adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in
undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things
were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was
the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of _low
life_, (The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe)

What occured to me in going over the story of Robinson Crusoe is that
direct naration
isn't used at all there. All said by someone in conversation is
expressed in indirect naration.

Does this show that direct naration wasn't established yet around the
early 18th century?

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Don Phillipson - 14 Jan 2010 12:25 GMT

> What occured to me in going over the story of Robinson Crusoe is that
> direct narration isn't used at all there. All said by someone in

conversation is

> expressed in indirect naration.
>
> Does this show that direct narration wasn't established yet around the
> early 18th century?

No. Factors in testing the proposition "direct narration wasn't
established yet around the early 18th century."
1. It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative proposition:
but this one could be rephrased, e.g. "Direct speech was
rare in 18th century prose."
2. An undefined field like 18th century prose is not
reliably tested by a single sample.. We require not just
several or many samples but enough to be statistically
significant.
Mind you, most literary scholars seem to be innumerate
i.e. might well write thus.

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Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

direct naration