1. Point of View, Narrative Voice

2. Narrative perspective viewing aspect: focus like a movie camera: choosing, framing, emphasizing, distorting limited/unlimited (omniscient narrator) stand back: dramatic focus verbal aspect: voice

3. Point of view visual perspective ideological framework basic types of narration: 1 st person (I-narration) 3 rd person (they-narration) e.g., 'window' on text: seems objective internal vs external restricted knowledge vs unrestricted knowledge (seemed, looked as if) texts with instability of point of view: watch out for WHO experiences and WHAT is experienced

4. Focalization external focalization: unidentified narrator character focalization: a character experiences focalizer: the one who is looking focalized: what is being focussed on expression and construction of types of consciousness and self-consciousness Shifting narrative viewpoints, several narrators: Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

5. Narratology the study of narrative in literature Early examples in the 20 th century: Vladimir Propp (Russian Formalist) Morphology of the Folktale (1928) Claude Lévi-Strauss (Structuralist) Anthropologie Structurale (1958) (myths) Gérard Genette, Narrative discourse (1972)

6. Genette’s system narrative: the result of the interaction of its component levels 3 basic kinds of narrator: - narrator is absent from his own narrative ((‘heterodiegetic narrator’)) - narrator is inside his narrative (1 st person) ((‘homodiegetic narrator’)) - narrator is inside his narrative and also main character ((‘autodiegetic narrator’))

7. Roland Barthes (1915-1980) France: from structuralism to poststructuralism attempt to describe narrative as a formal system based on the model of a grammar ‘The death of the Author’ (essay from 1967) (against the concept of the author as a way of forcing a meaning on to a text) S/Z (1970) a critical reading of Balzac’s Sarrasine text open to interpretation

8. Narratives Personal, political, historical, legal, medical narratives: narrative’s power to capture certain truths and experiences in special ways - unlike other modes of explanation and analysis such as statistics, descriptions, summaries, or reasoning via conceptual abstractions

9. Setting The space where the narrative takes place: rural setting, urban setting, nature scenes, country houses etc. Settings often echo or emphasize other features: Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847) Yorkshire moors Wuthering Heights ↔Thrushcross Grange EarnshawsLintons harsh, roughwarm, soft, civilised

10. Space and Time James Joyce, Ulyesses (1922) Dublin, 16 June 1904 Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925) London, a single day in June, after WWI

11. Task What can you notice about the following excerpts? (Can you guess the period, the author, the work?) How is the weather defining the beginning of the book in Chapter 1? What do we find out about the narrator from the way Mrs Fairfax is introduced in Ch 12? How is the introduction of the people in Moor house different in Ch 30? Do you notice anything special about the way the last chapter, Ch 38 begins?

12. Chapter 1 There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early), the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. (Penguin Classics edition, p 39)

13. Chapter 12 The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lovely child; who had been spoilt and indulged (140)

14. Chapter 30 The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In a few days I have so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their occupations, converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time – the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles. (376)

15. Chapter 38 Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor house, where Mary was cooking the dinner, and John cleaning the knives, and I said – ‘Mary, I have been married to Mr Rochester this morning.’(474)