Chapter 15: Vignette

Point of view and modality in Brian Friel’s ‘The Diviner’

Applying Simpson’s influential model of modal grammar of point of view, in this chapter Clara Neary analyses the largely unexplored prose fiction of Irish playwright Brian Friel. By comprehensively charting and interpreting the narrative modes in the short story ‘The Diviner’ (from 1962), Neary demonstrates how Simpson’s model enables stylisticians to get to the often-obscure heart of this story. Though at times difficult to categorise, the narrative is predominantly in the ‘elusive’ B(R) neutral mode, the characteristic oscillation between reflector and narratorial modes enabling the crucial construction of ambiguity around the story’s central character, Nelly Devenny. The narrative’s refusal to reflect Nelly’s point of view in a sustained or meaningful way — alternately representing it from a distance or merging it with that of the villagers she is so desperate to impress — ultimately serves to reinforce the inevitability of Nelly’s social failure.