ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

offers a definition of the middle that emphasizes the digressive nature of the narrative
line, particularly in long-form narratives. Much like Aristotle, Miller defines the
middle as “all that series in a narrative between beginning and end” (“Narrative
Middles” 376). However, for Miller, the novel does not share the traditional unity of
plot which is provided in drama by a middle which draws a straight line between
beginning and end. Following Friedrich Schlegel, Miller argues that the novel “does
not depend on being a continuous, literally represented spectacle” (Miller, “Narrative
Middles” 384). That is, the novel has a freedom in regard to duration—Genette’s term
for the relative speed of events in the discourse (narrative time) relative to those in the
story (story time), which even in scenic narration is conventional in nature (Genette,
Narrative Discourse 87). Miller ascribes this conventionality specifically to the
written word. However, Miller’s account of both the narrative line and the split
between narrative time and story time presupposes an Aristotelian ideal of drama that
has never been true. Aristotle’s account of the unity of action is not descriptive, but
prescriptive: “The Unity of a Plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having one
man as its subject. […] One sees, therefore, the mistake of all the poets who have
written a Herecleid, a Theseid, or similar poems; they suppose that, because Heracles
was one man, the story also of Heracles must be one story” (1451a). That is, actions
which are not unified are frequent dramatic subjects. And even Aristotle did not
prescribe that a dramatic performance must have a duration equal to story time: in
fact, Aristotle considered the time of performance to be beyond the scope of the
Poetics: “As for the limit of its length, so far as that is relative to public performances
and spectators, it does not fall within the theory of poetry” (1451a). The search for
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