Voice and focalization

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Culture & Literature (Definition, etc.) Flashcards on Voice and focalization, created by Lisza Neumeier on 27/11/2016.
Lisza Neumeier
Flashcards by Lisza Neumeier, updated more than 1 year ago
Lisza Neumeier
Created by Lisza Neumeier almost 8 years ago
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With what was Gérard Genette unhappy? Stanzels concept of the narrative situation nor with the broad use of the term point of view because both combine the way a narrator tells a story and how its world is perceived. Instead, he made a clear difference between the questions 'who speaks?'(voice) and 'who perceives'(focalization)
question of voice who speaks to whom from which position in relation to the story?
Focalization focalization has perceputal, psychological and ideological facets, which are sense impressions, emotionals and cognitive process and a system of norms.
How do we find out who speaks? we first have to find who and where the narrator is in the first place overt vs. covert narrator
covert narrator is merely a voice that reports information The author passes on the task of evaluating the story to the reader.
overt narrator An overt narrator, in constrast, appears as a mediator in the discourse. Overt narrators introduce themselves and the strories to the reader and give comments that guide the reader's understanding. There are many variations in between a mere neutral voice and a narrator who seems to be a complex character.
What is the narrator's position? heterodiegetic author? homodiegetic author?
heterodiegetic author heterodiegetic author does not belong ti the world of characters
homodiegetic author homodiegetic author belongs to the story world and is called an autodiegetic narrator if he/she tells the story of his/her own life. These technical terms roughly correspond to Stanzel's third-person and first-person narrative situation
story - within a story? In a story - within-a-story, an embedded narrative (Binnenerzählung) within a frame narrrative (Rahmenerzählung), the intradiegetic narrator tells his/her embedded story from within the primary or frame narrative, which is told by the extradiegetic narrator. Embedded narratives mostly take an introductory but rarely a terminal framing, and often both.
What is the use of this distinction? Framing narratives direct the reader's attention to the ways and uses of storytelling itself in the specific transition zones between one story and another, and indirectly in the relationship between the embedded and the frame narrative.
introductory/initial framing and terminal framing
who for example would be a very reliable author? An omniscient and detached heterodiegetic narrator who inspires confidence.
What do we have to be careful with? Homodiegetic narrators because of their limited perception and insight.
checking reliablity checking its 1.) consistency 2.) coherence and 3.) correspondence
focalization focalization asks who perceives what in which way
How can you spot the focalizer? by tracing the reference of the verbs of perception, feeling and thinking to the subject of the statement.
What kind of focalizations are there? Internal focalization fixed focalization variable focalization multiple focalization external focalization zero focalization
Internal focalization Internal focalization locates the perspective within a character, limiting the information to hid/her perceptual and conceptual grasp of the world. subcategories: fixed focalization, variable focalization, multiple focalization
fixed focalization Internal focalization can vary between fixed focalization which is restricted to one and the same perspective throughout the narrative
variable focalization and variable focalization, which presents different scenes through different perspectives.
multiple focalization multiple focalization which invites comparisons between several perspectives of the same event
external focalization external focalization presents information of characters' external behavior, such as speech and action, excluding feelings and thought.
zero focalization The awkward term zero focalization does not mean that nor perspective is given but that the perspective cannot be atrributed to someone in particular or has no restrictions and thus can vary, such as that of Stanzel' omnicscient narraotr. The question is whether the differnent points of view can be subsumed under one comprehensive or monological view of the world or fall apart into confliction or dialogic perspectives, multiplying options to make sense of the word.
how can a narrator represent a character's mental processes and utterances? a narrator has different options to represent a character's mental processes and utterance which can be ordered along a line that ranges from (diegetic) telling to (mimetic) showing.
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