4. A Lodger Returns

Henrik Pontoppidan’s major novel A Fortunate Man (1898-1905) is told by a heterodiegetic omniscient narrator. A short section of the novel was originally published as the short story "Heart’s Delight" (1885). This short story is in the first edition told by a homodiegetic narrator, but in a revised second edition (1886), it is told by a heterodiegetic narrator. By tracing the epigenetic changes from the two versions of "Heart’s Delight" to A Fortunate Man, this essay argues that the change of voice in "Heart’s Delight" not only made it possible for Pontoppidan to later embed the short story in A Fortunate Man; it also resolved the unintended deficient narration (Phelan 2017) of the first edition of the short story and made it more stylistically coherent because it already featured characteristics typical of omniscient narration. Homodiegetic narration resembling omniscient narration anchored in single versions of texts, has previously been described by narrative critics (Skov Nielsen 2004; Shen 2013). This essay combines narratology and genetic criticism to explain the origin of inconsistencies in single texts and across versions and works.