The Gnomic Space: Authorial Ethos between Voices in Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfall

Abstract

Drawing from recent studies on authorial attachment by Dawson (2013) and Korthals Altes (2014), the article revises the notions of narrative authority and gnomic statements. I claim that authorial concerns, instead of manifesting themselves in imposing intrusions, may take the form of agential indecision, reflecting the ultimate imbalance between lived experience and its artistic framing. As a narrative emblem of this relativist stance toward knowledge and authority, I deal with focalizers who assume authorial postures in their present-tense internal discourse and by doing so juxtapose existentialist immediacy of experience with artistic maneuvering. The ultimate locus for authorial ethos without authoritativeness is found in the gnomic statement that is framed by free indirect discourse and ambivalent pronominal reference. My main test case is Michael Cunningham’s novel By Nightfall (2010), but I also discuss its intertextual networking with Madame Bovary, Death in Venice, and Disgrace. In its keen attention to gnomic statements, Cohn’s canonical analysis of Death in Venice serves as a methodological inspiration. I suggest that By Nightfall offers an unconventional reading of Mann’s novella by drawing an analogy between the protagonists of these two novels: the self-deprecation and aesthetic perfectionism of Cunningham’s protagonist preoccupies the very narrative discourse that nevertheless refers to him in the third-person, suggesting that also Aschenbach may have more narrative control over his downfall than Cohn is ready to allow him. My cross-fertilizing analyses, moving between canonized readings and contemporary examples, demonstrate a relativist stance toward gnomic truths, a stance finding its expression in the narrative double exposure of the figural and the authorial.