ABSTRACT
This chapter argues a paradox that omniscient narration may be a necessity in a world riven by opposing perspectives, that a respect for the variety of perspectives that exist in the world depends upon it. This is particularly evident in what is among the greatest of English novels, Middlemarch. The "omniscient" narrator of Middlemarch represents an attempt to achieve knowledge of the other. In Bakhtinian terms he works in behalf of the dialogic. Since characters tend to be opaque to one another, genuine dialogue is rare. Since characters tend to be opaque to one another, genuine dialogue is rare. In penetrating the consciousness of all the characters, the narrator enables us to see the world from a variety of perspectives. He makes possible a dialogue within the mind of the reader, if not between the characters in the novel. In Middlemarch, knowledge of the social is a rebuke to all dreams of transcendence.
