A comparison of the ways in which the authors of Atonement and Brideshead revisited work to construct a novel that is conscious of its own artificiality

The first 200 words of this essay...

A comparison of the ways in which the authors of Atonement and Brideshead revisited work to construct a novel that is conscious of its own artificiality

Perhaps one of the most significant ways in which Waugh highlights the artificiality of Brideshead Revisited, is through the use of a narrator whose perspective is constrained by a number of idealising filters. During the Prologue, when Charles is 'homeless, childless, middle-aged, loveless', the house of Brideshead is similarly constructed as something that is 'crouching, like a hind in the bracken'. However, when Charles goes on his pastoral retreat into the past, adorning his Nostalgic filters, the house is no longer hiding (as crouching implies) but is part of a 'new and secret landscape' (Language of the conventional pastoral mode), reflecting how Waugh wishes us to adjust our interpretation of the concealed location of the house in relation to Charles's perspective. Even the construction of the house itself mimics the nature of the narrative; 'The dome was false, designed to be seen from below'. This enacts the way in which we, the reader, are only meant to see the narrative from a particular angle.

In Atonement, we are initially lead to