The Voice of the Narrator in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit

In order to examine the voice of the narrator in The Hobbits and to determine its most characteristic features, it is necessary to first take a closer look at some theoretical aspects and the different approaches to analysing the narrator and the narrative situation of a novel. There are a number of different narrative theories available, and for this paper two of them will be consulted in order to characterise the voice of the narrator in The Hobbit.

The first theory will be Franz K. Stanzel’s approach to defining narrative situations, as explained in his work Typische Formen des Romans.2 In his book Stanzel differentiates between authorial, figural and first-person narrative situation, which will be further explained in the corresponding chapter on the voice of the narrator in The Hobbit.3

The second theory is that of Wayne C. Booth and his view on narrators, to be found in The Rhetoric of Fiction.4 Additional to that, Paul E. Thomas’ article on Tolkien’s narrator’s5, in which he also discusses the narrative voice in The Hobbit according to Booth’s system, will also be utilised.

According to Franz K. Stanzel, there are three main narrative situations to be found in a novel, which he labelled first person, figural and authorial narrative situation. Furthermore, Stanzel put great emphasis on the term ‘mediacy’ in order to further define those three situations. According to his writings, ‘mediacy’ describes the extend to which the voice of the narrator in a novel is apparent to or hidden from its readers. “Whenever a piece of news is conveyed, whenever something is reported, there is a mediator – the voice of the narrator is audible. I term this phenomenon ‘mediacy’ (Mittelbarkeit).”6 He further explained that “[m]ediacy is the generic characteristic which distinguishes narration from other forms of literary art.”7

Taking these statements into consideration, Stanzel mainly understands the aforementioned three narrative situations as “rough descriptions of basic possibilities of rendering the mediacy of narration.”8