Point of View, Narrative Voice
Narrative perspective
• viewing aspect: focus
like a movie camera:
choosing, framing,
emphasizing, distorting
limited/unlimited (omniscient narrator)
stand back: dramatic focus
• verbal aspect: voice
Point of view
• visual perspective
• ideological framework
• basic types of narration: 1st person (I-narration)
3rd person (they-narration)
e.g., 'window' on text:
seems objective
internal vs external
restricted knowledge vs unrestricted knowledge
(seemed, looked as if)
• texts with instability of point of view: watch out for
WHO experiences and WHAT is experienced
Focalization
• external focalization: unidentified narrator
• character focalization: a character experiences
focalizer: the one who is looking
focalized: what is being focussed on
expression and construction of types of
consciousness and self-consciousness
Shifting narrative viewpoints, several narrators:
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Narratology
the study of narrative in literature
Early examples in the 20th century:
Vladimir Propp (Russian Formalist)
Morphology of the Folktale (1928)
Claude Lévi-Strauss (Structuralist)
Anthropologie Structurale (1958) (myths)
Gérard Genette, Narrative discourse (1972)
Genette’s system
narrative: the result of the interaction of
its component levels
3 basic kinds of narrator:
- narrator is absent from his own narrative
((‘heterodiegetic narrator’))
- narrator is inside his narrative (1st person)
((‘homodiegetic narrator’))
- narrator is inside his narrative and also main
character
((‘autodiegetic narrator’))
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
France: from structuralism to poststructuralism
attempt to describe narrative as a formal system
based on the model of a grammar
‘The death of the Author’ (essay from 1967)
(against the concept of the author as a way
of forcing a meaning on to a text)
S/Z (1970) a critical reading of Balzac’s Sarrasine
text open to interpretation
Narratives
Personal, political, historical, legal, medical
narratives: narrative’s power to capture
certain truths and experiences in special ways
- unlike other modes of explanation and
analysis such as statistics, descriptions,
summaries, or reasoning via conceptual
abstractions
Setting
The space where the narrative takes place:
rural setting, urban setting,
nature scenes, country houses etc.
Settings often echo or emphasize other features:
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Yorkshire moors
Wuthering Heights ↔Thrushcross Grange
Earnshaws
Lintons
harsh, rough
warm, soft, civilised
Space and Time
James Joyce, Ulyesses (1922)
Dublin,
16 June 1904
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
London,
a single day in June,
after WWI
Task
What can you notice about the following excerpts?
(Can you guess the period, the author, the work?)
How is the weather defining the beginning of the
book in Chapter 1?
What do we find out about the narrator from the
way Mrs Fairfax is introduced in Ch 12?
How is the introduction of the people in Moor
house different in Ch 30?
Do you notice anything special about the way the
last chapter, Ch 38 begins?
Chapter 1
There was no possibility of taking a walk
that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in
the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;
but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was
no company, dined early), the cold winter
wind had brought with it clouds so sombre,
and a rain so penetrating, that further
outdoor exercise was now out of the question.
(Penguin Classics edition, p 39)
Chapter 12
The promise of a smooth career, which my
first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall
seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer
acquaintance with the place and its inmates.
Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be what she
appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured
woman, of competent education and average
intelligence. My pupil was a lovely child; who
had been spoilt and indulged (140)
Chapter 30
The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House,
the better I liked them. In a few days I have so far
recovered my health that I could sit up all day,
and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana
and Mary in all their occupations, converse with
them as much as they wished, and aid them
when and where they would allow me. There was
a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind
now tasted by me for the first time – the pleasure
arising from perfect congeniality of tastes,
sentiments, and principles.
(376)
Chapter 38
Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we
had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were
alone present. When we got back from
church, I went into the kitchen of the manor
house, where Mary was cooking the dinner,
and John cleaning the knives, and I said –
‘Mary, I have been married to Mr
Rochester this morning.’
(474)