Editing David Copperfield (section)

=== First person narrator ===
The use of the [[First-person narrative|first person]] determines the point of view: the [[narrator]] Copperfield, is a recognised writer, married to Agnes for more than ten years, who has decided to speak in public about his past life. This recreation, in itself an important act, can only be partial and also biased, since, [[A priori and a posteriori|''a priori'']], Copperfield is the only viewpoint and the only voice; not enjoying the prerogatives of the third person, omnipotence, ubiquity, clairvoyance, he relates only what he witnessed or participated in:<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=11}}</ref> all the characters appear in his presence or, failing that, he learns through hearsay, before being subjected to his pen through the prism of his conscience, deformed by the natural deficit of his perception and accentuated by the selective filter of memory.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.signosemio.com/genette/narratology.asp |publisher=Signo |location=Quebec |title=Narratology, The narrative theory of Gérard Genette  |last1=Guillemette |first1=Lucie |last2=Lévesque |first2=Cynthia |year=2016 |access-date=5 April 2019}}</ref> Story teller and teacher, Copperfield does not let the facts speak for themselves, but constantly asserts himself as master of the narrative game, and he intervenes, explains, interprets and comments. His point of view is that of the adult he has become, as he expresses himself just as he is writing. At the end of his book, he feels a writer's pride to evoke "the thread[s] in the web I have spun".<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=697}}</ref>

Gareth Cordery writes that "if ''David Copperfield'' is the paradigmatic [[Bildungsroman]], it is also the quintessential novel of memory"<ref>{{harvnb|Cordery|2008|p=372}}</ref> and as such, according to Angus Wilson, the equal of [[Marcel Proust]]'s ''[[In Search of Lost Time]]'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu'').<ref>{{harvnb|Wilson|1972|p=214}}</ref> The memory of the hero engages so intensely with his memories that the past seems present:

<blockquote>How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung about the place; I see the hoar-frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and rap their feet upon the floor.<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=101}}</ref></blockquote>

In such passages, which punctuate the retrospective chapters, the relived moment replaces the lived, the [[historical present]] seals the collapse of the original experience and the recreation of a here and now that seizes the entire field of consciousness.<ref name=Cordery2008p373>{{harvnb|Cordery|2008|p=373}}</ref> Sometimes this resurrected experience is more vivid than reality; so, in Chapter 41, about Traddles's face, he says: "His honest face, he looked at me with a serio-comic shake of his head impresses me more in the remembrance than it did in the reality."<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=478}}</ref> These are "sacred moments", writes Gareth Cordery, which Copperfield has carefully guarded in "the treasure chambers"<ref group="N">The expression is from [[Augustine of Hippo|St Augustine]] who uses it at the end of the first part of his ''[[Confessions (Augustine)|Confessions]]''.</ref> of his memory, where sings "the music of time":<ref name=Cordery2008p373 /> "secret prose, that sense of a mind speaking to itself with no one there to listen".<ref>{{cite book |first=Graham |last=Greene |author-link=Graham Greene |title=The Lost Childhood and Other Essays |location=London |publisher=Eyre and Spottiswode |year=1951 |page=[https://archive.org/details/lostchildhoodoth0000gree/page/53 53]|title-link=The Lost Childhood and Other Essays }}</ref>