An Investigation of Linguistic Modality in Melville’s ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’

The present article is an investigation of linguistic Modality in the short story, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener,’ written by Herman Melville. In this short story, we hear the story of Bartleby from the mouth of the narrator who is a Lawyer and present in the story. He tries to rationalize his own argument by belittling the weird actions of Bartleby. Since linguistic Modality is concerned with the commitment of a speaker to the truth of a proposition, a detailed identification of the Modal Auxiliaries stated by the narrating author based the modal systems of Simpson, Palmer and Collins was done. The analysis showed that Dynamic modality was the dominant one. Thus through a discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s argument on Bartleby, it is shown how Bartleby and Lawyer impose their own wishes on one another through excessive use of Dynamic Volitive Woulds. The excessive use of the words of estrangement such as ‘seem’ and ‘appear,’ show the narrator’s pretence to have access to the internal motives of Bartleby. This also identifies the story with negative shading which shows the bewilderment and confusion of the narrating author.

Keywords:

Modality , Bartleby , Dynamic Modality , Words of Estrangement , Negative Shading