Examples-of-Narration-and-Focali...

anglonerd

Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa

1º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Zaragoza

Reservados todos los derechos.

No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
 NARRATION AND FOCALIZATION
PRACTISE

(1) […] my mother was convicted of felony […] and being found quick with child, she was respited for about
seven months, in which time having brought me into the world, […] she […] obtained the favour of being
transported to the plantations, and left me about half a year old; and in bad hands you may be sure. This is too near
the first hours of my life for me to relate any thing of myself, but by hear say; ‘tis enough to mention, that as I was
born in such an unhappy place [Newgate prison], I had no parish to have recourse to for my nourishment in my
infancy, nor can I give the least account how I was kept alive, other, than that as I have been told, some relation of
my mothers took me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense or by whose direction I know nothing at all
of it. (Defoe, Moll Flanders, 1722)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: AUTODIEGETIC NARRATOR, REPETITION OF SUBJECTI “I”.

IT IS SUBJECTIVE, BECAUSE SHE IS GIVING HER OPINION.
IT IS INTERNAL FOCALIZATION, IN WHICH THE CHARACTER AND THE NARRATOR COINCIDED.

(2) In the second year of his retirement, the Marchioness brought him a daughter, and died in three days after her
delivery. The Marquis […] was extremely afflicted at her death; but time having produced its usual effects, his great
fondness for the little Arabella entirely engrossed his Attention and made up all the happiness of his life. […]
Nature had indeed given her a most charming face, a shape easy and delicate, a sweet and insinuating voice, and an
air so full of dignity and grace, as drew the admiration of all that saw her. […] From her earliest youth she had
discovered a fondness for reading, which extremely delighted the Marquis; he permitted her therefore the use of his
library, in which, unfortunately for were great stores of romances; […]. (Lennox, Female Quixote, Bk. I, ch. 1,
1752)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: HETERODIEGETIC, BECAUSE HE/SHE IS NOT A CHARACTER, IS AN EXTERNAL NARRATOR. THE NARRATOR KNOWS
EVERYTHING AND GIVES AS A PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE MAIN CHARACTER.
IT IS EXTERNAL FOCALIZATION, BECAUSE IT IS THE NARRATOR’S VIEW.

(3) “Their party in their dining-room was large, for almost all the Lucases came to meet Maria and hear the news;
and various were the subjects which occupied them; lady Lucases was enquiring of Maria across the table […]; Mrs
Bennet was doubly engaged, on one hand collecting an account of the present fashions from Jane, who sat some
way below her, and on the other, retailing them all to the younger Miss Lucases; and Lydia, in a voice rather louder
than an other person’s, was enumerating the various pleasures of the morning to anybody who would hear
her.”(Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, 1813)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: HETERODIEGETIC NARRATOR / EXTERNAL NARRATOR.

IT IS EXTERNAL FOCALIZATION, BECAUSE IT IS THE NARRATOR’S VIEW.

(4) She nudged him with her elbow. “What does that mean?” he wondered, glancing at her out of the corner of his
eye as they moved on. Her ace, seen in profile, was so calm that it gave him a hint. It stood out against the light,
framed in the over of her bonnet, whose pale ribbons were like streaming reeds. Her eyes with their long curving
lashes looked straight ahead: they were fully open, but seemed a little narrowed because of the blood that was
pulsing gently under the fine skin of her cheekbones. The rosy flesh between her nostrils was all but transparent in
the light. She was inclining her head to one side, and the pearly lips of her white teeth showed between her lips.
(Flaubert, Madame Bovary [1856], qtd in Abbott 2002a, 66-67)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: HETERODIEGETIC NARRATOR / EXTERNAL NARRATOR.

IT IS INTERNAL FOCALIZATION, BECAUSE IT IS THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE CHARACTER, NOT OF THE NARRATOR.

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Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
 (5) I am I and you are you and I know it and you don’t know it and you could do so much for me if you just
would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me
and Darl. (William Faulkner, As ILay Dying, 1930, 51).

TYPE OF NARRATOR: INTERNAL MONOLOGUE, FREE DIRECT SPEECH (FDS). AUTODIEGETIC NARRATOR AND AN INTENRAL NARRATOR
COINCIDED.

(6) “I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it,
had minded what they were about when they begot me […]. Had they duly considered all this, and proceeded

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
accordingly, - I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which
the reader islikely to see me. – Besides me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as manyof you may
think it…” (Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy Vol. I, Ch. 1)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: INTERNAL NARRATOR, AUTODIGETIC NARRATOR. WE CAN SEE SELF-CONSICIOUS.

IT IS INTENRAL FOCALIZATION.

(7) “Letter I

Dear father and mother,

I have great trouble, and some comfort, to acquaint you with. The trouble is that my good lady died of illness I
mentioned to you, and left us all much grieved for the loss of her; for she was a dear good lady, and kind to all us
her servants. Much I feared, that as I was taken by her ladyship to wait upon her person, I should be quite destitute
again” (Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded, 1740)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: INTENRPOLATED NARRATOR MIXING PRESENT AND PAST TENSE. INTERNAL AND AUTODIEGETIC NARRATOR.

(8) “Poor girl, she woke up that morning with a terrible hangover. Would that the phonewould never ring. But it
did. It was George. He said he was sorry, and the confused, naïve, trusting soul that she was, she believed him.”
(qtd. in Abbott 2002a, 65)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: EXTERNAL / HETERODIEGETIC NARRATOR

INDIRECT DISCOURSE

(9)

‘The marvellous thing is that it’s painless,’ he said.‘That’s how you know
when it starts.’
‘Is it really?’
‘Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odour though.That must bother you.’
‘Don’t! Please don’t.’
Look at them,’ he said. ‘Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?’(Ernest Hemingway, “The
Snows of Kilimanjaro,” 1936)

TYPE OF NARRATOR: EXTERNAL / HETERODIEGETIC NARRATOR.

DIRECT SPEECH, DIALOGUE

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