Focusing (literature)

See also: Focusing

The term of focusing can take two different directions. In a first direction, it can indicate a narrative technique which consists in centring the eye of the reader on a detail (of an object, a character etc) previously considered as a whole to which it belongs. In a second direction, it indicates the hearth of the perception of the universe contained in a narrative text, the point of view from which the elements of this universe are described and told. In this second direction, one usually distinguishes three types of focusing, conceptualized by the theorist of the literature Gerard Genette:

External focusing

The hearth is external with described reality. The narration takes only into account what one perceives of outside. Any appreciation or subjective interpretation is excluded in theory. The events seem, all in all, to proceed in front of the objective of a camera which is satisfied to record them (the scenarios of cinema besides are generally written in external focusing). In external mode of focusing, the reader directly does not have access to the subjectivity (thought, feelings, emotions) of a narrator or a character. The Littérature of the 20th century readily exploited this narrative technique. For example, Of the mice and the men , novel of John Steinbeck, uses only external focusing.

Internal focusing

The hearth is the conscience of a character. The reality contained in the narrative text is described and told through its particular point of view, coloured by its subjectivity. From where the presence of deictics (personal pronouns of 1st and the 2nd person, conclusive, certain adverbs of time and place) and modalisateurs (verbs, adjectives, adverbs and phrases expressing a subjective point of view). Internal focusing characterizes novels like the pastoral Symphony of Andre Gide or the Foreigner of Albert Camus. It is completely possible to meet internal focusing in an account with the 3rd person. As example, the beginning of Sentimental Education of Gustave Flaubert presents a description led to the 3rd person through the glance of her hero, Frederic, therefore in internal focusing: " Through the fog, it contemplated bell-towers , buildings of which it did not know the names; then it embraced, in a last glance, the island Saint Louis … "

Focusing zero

The hearths are multiple. Perception is not limited any more to a particular point of view. One speaks in this case about omniscient narrator because this narrator (generally confused with the author himself) sees all and knows all (like God, all in all) described reality, of the history which he tells, of the thoughts of the characters, their past or their future. This technique is most frequent (dominant) in the Romance traditional (former to the 20th century). The novels of Stendhal, of Balzac, Flaubert (inter alia) use focusing zero.

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