Non-narrative Comments In George Eliot’s Middlemarch

Middlemarch is the Eliot novel which has received the most critical attention. The aim of this paper is to study how non-narrative comments are implemented in Middlemarch as a process for shaping the reader’s responses to the characters and events. Focusing on the ways in which comments steer the dynamic relationship between narrator and reader, this study introduces the concepts of story-time now and narration now to distinguish non-narrative comments from the narrative. Story-time now is defined as the present in the narrative that involves the reader. Narration now constitutes a second diegetic level and appears as the reader is pulled away from the narrative and addressed by the narrator. In this second now the reader is still engaged in the reading process and part of the reading world but pushed to another level with the narrator. The reader is invited into a narration-now sphere where he or she is encouraged to participate in communication with the narrator. With implements derived from the field of narratology, this paper illustrates different ways through which commentary operates to shape reader response in Middlemarch, including generalization of particular phenomena, and specific references and addresses to the reader.