Narration and focalization

1. Narration and focalization

2. Outline • Narrating agency • The role and functions of the narrator • Narrating agency vs. reader response • Reliable vs. unreliable narrators • Focalization

3. Narrating agency: who tells?

4. The role and functions of the narrator • Relating actions and events • Establishing a setting • Commenting upon the characters • Generalizing • Commenting upon the act of narration itself • Addressing the narratee (“Dear reader”, for example) • Reporting the characters’ words and presenting their thoughts

5. Narrating agency vs. reader response Narrative techniques can have the effects of reducing or increasing the distance between the reader and the characters. • Narrative techniques that have the effects of reducing the distance between the reader and the characters can be used in further characterization (the way a characters speaks can reveal character traits). They can also contribute to dramatization (the reader is encouraged to live vicariously and thus get involved in the story). • Increasing the distance between the reader and the characters enables the author to invite the reader to assess the situation, to appraise or to condemn – to be critical. As a result, this narrative technique can often be found in the type of ironical text in which the reader, far from identifying with the characters, is supposed to feel superior to them and laugh at them.

6. Types of narrators • Omniscient • Limited omniscient

7. Reliable vs. unreliable narrators • The use of the unreliable narrator contributes to textual richness and generate what Bakhtin defined as “polyphony” or “polyvocality” of the novel

8. Focalization: who sees? • Internal: “ he hung before her, looking at her fixedly, as she stood crouched against the wall” • External : “look down into the valley from this terrace-height where love is kindling” • Focalization 0: when the focalizer cannot be located, he/she does not seem to be watching from any precise place; the use of this focalizer is often combined with the use of an omniscient narrator