How does the Spatial Plane Shade into the Psychological Plane in Alice Munro’s Short Story “Train”? An Analysis of Point of View in Fiction from a Different Point of View

Abstract

Boris Uspensky, in his A Poetics of Composition (1973), offered a model for the study of point of view in fiction. His model was later revised and refined by British linguist Roger Fowler in his Linguistic Criticism (1986). The Fowler-Uspensky model encompasses four planes: the ideological plane, the temporal plane, the spatial plane, and the psychological plane. In his Stylistics, Paul Simpson also avers that most writers prefer to construct a spatial perspective that shifts “almost seamlessly into the cognitive field of a character.” (2004: 80) One conspicuous example of this last case is a short story called “Train” written by Canadian writer Alice Munro. Thus, by using various stylistic tools such as deixis, techniques of speech and thought presentation, and transitivity, the overarching aim of this study is to analyze how the point of view on the spatial plane jells into the psychological plane in “Train”.