THE IMAGE OF THE AUTHOR N P Izotova

THE IMAGE OF THE AUTHOR N. P. Izotova, Ph. D

LECTURE OUTLINE 1. The concept of the author in fiction and non-fiction. Internal and external aspects of the author’s presence in the text. 2. The notion of ‘point of view’ (narrative perspective). Types of narrative perspective. 3. The narrator in a literary text. The types of narrators with the regard to the author, and the textual world. 4. Focalization. Facets of Focalization.

RECOMMENDED LITERATURE 1. 2. 3. 4. Домашнев А. К. , Шишкина И. П. , Гончарова Е. А. Интерпретация художественного текста. – М. : Просвещение, 1989. – С. 69 -76. Брандес М. П. Стилистика текста. Теоретический курс: Учебник. – 3 -е изд. – М. : Прогресс-Традиция; ИНФРА-М, 2004. – С. 241 -292. Інтерпретація художнього тексту. Навчальний посібник із стилістики англійської мови для студентів IV курсу / Уклад. Воробйова О. П. , Іноземцева І. О. , Подолян І. Е. – К. : Вид. центр КНЛУ, 2004. – 80 с. Кухаренко В. А. Інтерпретація тексту: навч. пос. – Вінниця: НОВА КНИГА, 2004. – 272 с.

RECOMMENDED LITERATURE 5. Щирова И. А. , Гончарова Е. А. Многомерность текста: понимание и интерпретация: Учеб. Пос. – СПб. : ООО "Книжный Дом", 2007. – С. 219 -259 6. Кайда Л. Г. Композиционная поэтика текста. – М. : Флинта : Наука, 2011. – 408 с. 7. Rimmon-Kenan Sh. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. – L. ; N. Y. : Methuen, 1983. – 159 p. 8. Toolan M. Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. – [2 nd ed. ]. – L. : Routlege, 2001. – 260 p.

Participants of Narrative Communication (a semiotic model of communication) Real Author Implied Author Narratee Implied Reader Real reader

The notion of author • Russian tradition ‘image of the author’ (V. V. Vinogradov, B. Korman, M. Bakhtin) metaimage (N. Goncharova) § Western tradition implied author (W. Booth, Sh. Rimmon-Kenan, M. Toolan) abstract author (V. Schmid)

The Image of the Author A concentrated embodiment of the essence of the text that draws together the entire system of linguistic structures of the characters in their correlation with the narrator or narrators, and thereby being the conceptual stylistic centre, the focus of the whole (V. V. Vinogradov)

The Image of the Author I. Internal aspect (a certain point of view) II. External aspect (language manifestation, the system of images, idea, tone, etc. )

Point of View is a perceptual or conceptual position in term of which the narrated situation and events are presented (G. Prince)

Point of view (perspective) • Omniscient / unlimited point of view (the story is told by someone outside the action); • Limited point of view (everything is presented strictly in terms of the knowledge, feelings, and perceptions of the same character or different ones) 1. fixed 2. variable

Omniscient point of view (perspective) Each day involved an intense struggle to recreate the scene before him. Sometimes he failed, returning home at dark too tired to eat his supper. There was no purpose in complaining. It was not only the artisan who had to serve a frequently frustrating apprenticeship; it was the artist as well. He tolerated the occasional hopelessness for the exhilaration of accomplishing a clean line, a quality of verisimilitude. There was no other road for the zealot (I. Stone, Depths of Glory).

Limited point of view • I have an irresistible passion for pictures and I want continually to instruct myself, just as I want to eat my bread (I. Stone, Lust for Life). • I was possessed with the intense eagerness to learn and to discover ; Yet not to paint was to die (D. Weiss, The Venetian).

Variable Point of View 1. There were eight Japanese gentlemen having a fish dinner at Bentley’s. They spoke to each other rarely in their incomprehensible tongue, but always with a courteous smile and often with a small bow. 2. ‘The wine trade wouldn’t really suit you, would it? I spoke to my publisher about you and there’s a very good chance … if you begin with some reading. 3. ‘But I don’t know a thing about books. ’ (G. Greene, The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen)

First-Person Narrator “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They are nice and all -- I'm not saying that -- but they are also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddamn autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. “ (Salinger, Catcher in the Rye)

Second-Person Narrator “For years children whimpered and tugged: “Tell us, tell us. ” You promise to tell the children some other time, later, when they were old enough. Now the children stand eye to you and show you their teeth. “Tell us. ” “Tell you what? ” you ask, ingenuous. “Tell us The Important Things. ” You tell your children there are six continents and five oceans, or vice versa…. (B. L. Greenberg, Important Things)

Third-Person Narrator Each day involved an intense struggle to recreate the scene before him. Sometimes he failed, returning home at dark too tired to eat his supper. There was no purpose in complaining. It was not only the artisan who had to serve a frequently frustrating apprenticeship; it was the artist as well. He tolerated the occasional hopelessness for the exhilaration of accomplishing a clean line, a quality of verisimilitude. There was no other road for the zealot (I. Stone, Depths of Glory)

Gérald Genette (1930) § voice (Who speaks? ) § focalisation (Who perceives? )

Voice: Who Speaks? A narrator is the speaker or 'voice' of the narrative discourse. He or she is the agent who establishes communicative contact with an addressee (the 'narratee'), who manages the exposition, who decides what is to be told, how it is to be told (especially, from what point of view, and in what sequence), and what is to be left out. “ (Genette 1980 [1972]: 186).

Criteria for Narrators Typology 1. Narrative level 2. The extent of his / her participation in the story 3. The degree of perceptibility of his / her role 4. The reliability of the narrator

1. Narrative Level • Intradiegetic: narrator of the story within the story (embedded narrative) • Extradiegetic: narrator of the frame story • Hypodiegetic, etc.

Extradiegetic Narrator One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the searchlights came out. The others went down and took the bottles with them. He and Luz could hear them below on the balcony. Luz sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot night (Hemingway, A Very Short Story)

Gerard Genette: “Relationship to the story“ “The real question is whether or not the narrator can use the first person to designate one of his characters. We will therefore distinguish here two types of narrative: one with the narrator absent from the story he tells (Homer in the Iliad, Flaubert in L. Education sentimentale), the other with the narrator present as a character in the story he tells (Wuthering Heights). I call the first type, for obvious reasons, heterodiegetic, and the second type homodiegetic. ”

2. Extent of Participation in the Story From which Position? (Genette) • homodiegetic narrator: narrator who is present as a character in the story • autodiegetic narrator: narrator who tells the story of his or her own life • heterodiegetic narrator: narrator who isnot present as a character in the story

3. The degree of perceptibility of his role Who Speaks? (G. Genette) q covert narrator: Ш invisible Ш voice that reports information q overt narrator: Ш seems to have a distinct personality Ш makes his or her own opinions known Ш makes explicit judgements or implicit evaluations

Sings of Narrator’s Covertness • • • Description of setting Identification of characters Temporal summary Definition of characters Reports of what characters did not think or say Commentary – interpretation, judgment, generalization

Degree of Perceptibility ‘I’ll have a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes’ the first man said. ‘It isn’t ready yet. ’ ‘What’s the hell do you put it on the card for? ’ ‘That’s the dinner’, George explained. ‘You can get that at six o’clock. ’ George looked at the clock on the wall behind the counter. ‘It’s five o’clock. ’ ‘The clock says twenty minutes past five’, the second man said “It’s twenty minutes fast’ (E. Hemingway, ‘The Killers’)

Reliability of Narrator Reliable Narrator: A narrator "whose rendering of the story and commentary on it the reader is supposed to take as an authoritative account of the fictional truth. " Unreliable Narrator: A narrator "whose rendering of the story and/or commentary on it the reader has reasons to suspect. [. . . ] The main sources of unreliability are the narrator's limited knowledge, his personal involvement, and his problematic valuescheme. "

Narrator’s Main Functions • Communicative • Metanarrative (the narrator comments upon the text) • Modal • Elucidatory • Generalizing

Gérald Genette (1930) § voice (Who speaks? ) § focalisation (Who perceives? )

Focalization A focalizer is the agent whose point of view orients the narrative text. A text is anchored on a focalizer's point of view when it presents (and does not transcend) the focalizer's thoughts, reflections and knowledge, his/her actual and imaginary perceptions, as well as his/her cultural and ideological orientation. • External focalizer: a narrator • Internal focalizer: a character Ш fixed focalization Ш variable focalization Ш multiple focalisation • Zero focaliser: perspective not restricted, cannot be attributed

Focalized "Everyone gives up something when they marry. She had given up her home. She had come to live here, in this awful city. But Septimus let himself think about horrible things, as she could too, if she tried. He had grown stranger and stranger. He said people were talking behind the bedroom walls. Mrs. Filmer thought it odd. He saw things too--he had seen an old woman's head in the middle of a fern. Yet he could be happy when he chose. " (Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway)

Focalizer "She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. . . This whole vision was the worst thing yet--as including in particular the interview to which she had braced herself; and for what had she come but for the worst? " (Henry James, The Wings of the Dove )

External Focalization • "Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather largeboned, a little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from forty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed (though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she stands possessed appear's to be her wedding-ring, around which her finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet's dust. " (Charles Dickens, Bleak House )

Internal Focalization For my eighteenth birthday Jack gave me a five-year diary with a latch and a little key, light as a dime. I was sitting beside him scratching at the lock, which didn't seem to want to work, when he thought he saw his wife's Cadillac in the distance, coming toward us. He pushed me down onto the dirty floor of the pickup and kept one hand on my head while I inhaled the musk of his cigarettes in the dashboard ashtray and sang along with Rosanne Cash on the tape deck. ( Elizabeth Tallen, No One’s Mystery)

Facets of Focalization • The perceptual facet (time and space) • The psychological facet (cognitive and emotive components) • The ideological facet