Windows of Focalization: Deconstructing and Reconstructing a Narratological Concept

Abstract

In general, focalization theory addresses options and ranges of orientational restrictions of narrative presentation. Gerard Genette first associated focalization with focal character and questions who sees? and who perceives? Following Mieke Bal, however, many narratologists now believe that focalization covers much wider scope than either vision or perception and that narrator is potential focalizer, too. First-generation narratologists like Genette and Seymour Chatman view this expanded scope with considerable skepticisms, and despite such convincing recent applications as William Edmiston's Hindsight and Insight, focalization theory at present is caught in dilemma of conflicting approaches. My attempt to sort out these various approaches begins by reviving original field-of-vision conception as basis for defining general framework and key concepts of focalization. Section 2 deconstructs major axioms of focalization expounded by Genette. Section 3 traces theme of seeing in to Henry James's house of fiction and its million windows: drawing from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's treatment of natural metaphors, Ray Jackendoff's theory of cognitive interfaces, and Werner Wolf's concept of aesthetic illusion, I reclaim James's window metaphor as core model of focalization, defined basis of cognition and reception. Finally, section 4 considers Chatman's argument against focalizing narrators and problem of embedded focalization. Throughout, my aim is to argue for an interdisciplinary, integrative, and non-dichotomous approach towards focalization. 1. FOCUS-1 AND FOCUS-2 Let me begin with few simple vision-related questions. How do we define our of vision? Does it have specific shape? Does it support notion of an of vision? Where in this field does one place oneself, observer? Does this field have horizon, of view? Does it allow us to on certain objects and to leave other objects unfocused? How does it relate to the world? The answers to these questions may elicit model that looks (more or less) like (1), below:(1) In (1), field of vision (V) is represented as having conical shape like that of area lit by torch. It is taken in by an eye and its shape determined by an angle of vision. The eye, represented more technically, is convex lens (L) that collects rays by refraction - kind of controlled distortion - in burning or focus (F1), referred to hereafter as focus-1. Like photographic lens, eye is adjustable, allowing it to pick out and concentrate subsection of visual field, also commonly called focus or area in focus (F2), henceforth focus-2 or focus of interest or focus of attention. If focus-1 stands metonymically for eye's owner, then focus-1 and focus-2 are alternate terms for what Bal, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Marjet Berendsen, Ansgar Nunning, Edmiston, and others call, respectively, subject and object of focalization. Finally, field-of-vision area in figure (1) covers part of the world (W), represented simplistically as circle. At this point it must of course be acknowledged that (1), like all models, is an idealized and reductive abstraction; in fact, I might as well admit that it contains number of inaccuracies.(2) But although it says little about actual mechanisms of seeing, it will, I hope, say much about how we think we see things. And although model depicts V, F2, and W as if they were sets in Venn diagram - inviting one to play around with objects that are visible or invisible, seen centrally or peripherally, close up or far off, and so - my aim is not to make philosophical statement either about nature of these objects or about what philosophers call veridicality of their perception. Rather, (1) is an attempt to construct mental model of vision (Johnson-Laird), detailing a set of notions about [one's] own inner structures (Hofstadter 282). …

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