The narrative technique of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead revisited

Abstract

Evelyn Waugh was interested in style from an early age and this love continued to grow during his writing career. Upon reading Waugh's Lancing diaries, one may appreciate this concern about style and the use of language already forming at such a tender age. In a diary entry dated 2nd April 1921, Waugh writes: "I feel that I must write prose or burst. [ ... ] To express oneself in the Spenserian stanza is as though one had to paint a picture on little bits of paper and fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle." Waugh started his writing career by writing novels which were characterised by an economy in the topics they dealt with; the dialogues were concise and staccato and the narrative style is characterized by a certain upper-class refinement and compactness. This is evident, for instance, in Waugh's first novel Decline and Fall. Malcolm Bradbury notes an element of surrealism in the narrative technique of this novel, noting features such as "his quick dialogue, his filmic technique of cutting rapidly from one locale to another, his manipulation of point of view". Indeed, this approach characterises Waugh's early novels until a change in tone as well as technical development is employed in Work Suspended. Waugh shows a change in approach by introducing Jolm Plant as the first-person narrator and is seriously concerned with the realities of life such as love, death and birth, as opposed to the superficial characters inhabiting Waugh's previous novels. As Waugh's writing career progresses, the dialogues grow more ample and his style more ornate and it is in Brideshead Revisited that his sentences reach a height of elaboration.