Focalization mieke bal biography

Overview:

The relationship between the narrator, the focalizer and the focalized are essential in crafting a narrative that focuses on something.  Authors will strategically use the narrator(s), the focalizer, and the focalized to craft a narrative that has a specific focalization.  The term focalization was coined by Gérard Genette, a french literary theorist, in order to distinguish narrative agency and visual mediation. Similarly, point of view often confuses speaking and seeing, narrative voice, and focalization (Niederhoff).  The need for the term focalization arose from the need to describe, “the relations between the elements presented and the vision through which they are represented” (Austenfeld 295).

Defining Focalization:

In a summary of Gérard Genette’s discourse on focalization, the definition can be summarized as, “a selection or restriction of narrative information in relation to the experience and knowledge of the narrator, the characters or other, more hypothetical entities in the story world” (Niederhoff).  This definition provides the framework for the literary method used in narrative, yet Mieke Bal, a cultural theorist and critic elaborates on the definition set in place by the word’s creator:

“The focalizer is responsible for the operations that turn the fable into a story and the narrator for the ones that encode the story into the text” (Bronzwaer).

Internal, External, and Zero Focalization:

There are three common methods that authors use to craft a focalization: internal focalization, external focalization, and zero focalization.

Internal Focalization: Narrator = Character

This method of focalization means that the narrator says what a given character knows, this provides for a narrative with a ‘point of view.’ Events and thoughts are mediated through the point of view of the focalizer.  This method of storytelling takes on two different forms.  First, the author can use one narrator /focalizer to tell a story through. The second method of internal focalization involves multiple focalizers.  This allows the reader to interpret a story through multiple perspectives (Narrative Terms and Concepts).

Literary Examples of Internal Focalization

In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver uses five female narrators to craft the story of a family who moves to the Congo as missionaries.  The five different experiences and perspectives allows the author to use very subjective historical accounts in order to, “achieve the desired effect of a balanced narration” (Austenfeld 294)

The Poisonwood Bible separates narrators by chapter breaks, whereas in the novel, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf shifts focalizers often but keeps a constant narrator.  The narrator in Mrs. Dalloway is separate from the focalizer, yet because the narrator has access to the thoughts and feelings of the characters (focalizers), the literary method being used is also internal focalization.  An example of this can be found on page 15.

“And there the motor car stood, with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tree, Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had almost come to surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him” (Woolf 15)

In Mrs. Dalloway, the narrator has a mind of his/her own.  This fact, as well as the methodology of shifting focalizers, provides for a different type of internal focalization than the one the reader experiences reading The Poisonwood Bible.

External Focalization: Narrator < Character

The narrator says less than the character knows, this provides for an “objective” or “behaviorist” narrative.  External focalization, “has the narrator focus on visible, external aspects of events and characters in the narrative. The narrator, in this method, does not impart any information as to characters’ thoughts of feelings, but merely relates physically ascertainable facts to the reader.”  (Narrative Terms and Concepts).  This type of narrator who is outside the characters’ consciousness allows the reader to draw their own conclusions without the interpretation of the narrator.

 Example of External Focalization

Many movies are told through the method of external focalization.  The narrator is usually different than the characters (focalizers) and the viewers are set with the task of drawing conclusions based on what they see and hear. The narrator of the movie is not telling the viewer the emotions and feelings of the focalized, rather, the different scenes combined allow the viewer to understand how the narrator, focalizer, and focalized are related in order understand the desired focalization of the author.

Zero Focalization: Narrator > Character

This type of focalization denotes that the narrator knows more that the character and says more than the character knows.

Some believe that zero and external focalization could exist under the same definition because the story is being mediated outside of the character.  In external focalization, the narrator tells less than the character knows. In zero focalization, the narrator knows more than the character knows. Both provide a narrative where there is a separation between the focalizer and the narrator.

Works Cited:

Tags: focalization, focalizer, point of view