Foil
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens

Bleak House: Foil 1 key example

Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Narrative Foils:

Dickens makes two unusual choices in his method of narration in Bleak House. First, there are two narrators, and secondly, those narrators actually work as foils for one another, each amplifying and emphasizing traits of their counterpart. For example, the first voice readers encounter is that of Dickens's muscular and forceful third-person omniscient narrator. This "speaker" begins with the following fragment:

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather.

Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Narrative Foils:

Dickens makes two unusual choices in his method of narration in Bleak House. First, there are two narrators, and secondly, those narrators actually work as foils for one another, each amplifying and emphasizing traits of their counterpart. For example, the first voice readers encounter is that of Dickens's muscular and forceful third-person omniscient narrator. This "speaker" begins with the following fragment:

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather.

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