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Focalization and Narration: Theoretical and Terminological Refinements
- Poetics Today
- Duke University Press
- Volume 23, Number 4, Winter 2002
- pp. 685-697
- Article
- Additional Information
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This short article suggests a revision of the hierarchical levels of focalization and narration. It argues that greater precision in distinguishing degrees of both narrators' and characters' involvement in these distinct processes will result in a more flexible and more adequate typology. To achieve this purpose, the well-known systems of narrative situations in Bal 1981, 1985 [1977] and of focalization in Genette 1980 [1972] are reconciled with those of homodiegetic narration in Lanser 1981 and Füger 1993. A revised and comprehensive version of possible identity relations among narrators and focalizers is suggested and briefly exemplified through a number of well-known Anglo-American novels.