“In the novels of Cervantes and Flaubert, the mediator remained beyond the universe of the hero; he is now within the same universe. [NB: “now” refers to Stendahl’s Red and the Black specifically, but also Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Dostoevsky’s Possessed.]
We shall speak of external mediation when the distance is sufficient to eliminate any contact between the two spheres of possibilities of which the mediator and the subject occupy the respective centers. We shall speak of internal mediation when this same distance is sufficiently reduced to allow these two spheres to penetrate each other more or less profoundly.” ~ Deceit, Desire and the Novel, p 9
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