the question of the role of the novel's narrator and the extent to which he is to be identified with the author. Generally critics tend to follow "the convention of calling the narrator 'Powys'", Academics such as Wilson Knight, George Steiner, and John Bayley "have heard one voice in [Powys's] novels, that of Powys himself". Other critics, however, emphasise "the artistry of Powys", that his novels are "deliberate literary works". Charles Lock, for example, following ideas formulated by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, emphasizes the polyphonic or multiple-voiced nature of A Glastonbury Romance: "The characters' voices are not subject to the author's voice, bur all speak on equal terms". The narrator is not Powys, "Even when the narrator voices opinions known th have been held by Powys ... he must not be taken 'literally' or too seriously", his "voice [is] on the same plane as all other voices in the book Powys's narrator, according to Lock, is "unreliable, protean, deceptive, ambiguous, and Zany". However, while W. J. Keith accepts that Powys gives characters "arguments that may be very different from his own", he contends that this does not "stifle all 'omniscient' authorial opinion", as Lock, following Bakhtin, suggests, because the author "exerts ultimate authority". Significance of the settings Setting has a central role in A Glastonbury Romance and Roland Mathias suggests that Powys "is less interested in the clash of character than in the ethos of place. In his "Authors Review" of 1932 Powys names the hero of his novel as "Glastonbury herself", and in answer to the question as to how "can a mere place or region, have a personality?" he answers "I cannot tell. But I know that it has one!" However, the novel's first two chapters take place in Norfolk, and the third is at the site of the ancient stone circle, Stonehenge. Another important scene, at least in earlier uncut versions of the novel, takes place in the Wookey Hole Caves, some from Glastonbury on the edge of the Mendip Hills. Geographically Norfolk and the country surrounding Glastonbury are similar, that is both are low-lying, reclaimed marshland, though the town was formerly an island and has three prominent hills, Chalice Hill, Glastonbury Tor, and Wearyall or Wirral Hill, each of which has a role in the novel. Central to the novel is the contrast Powys makes between the inhabitants from the two main settings: On the