Forms and functions of narration and focalization in some selected poems of Lord Byron : A narratological analysis

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2008

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DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.22029/jlupub-15485

Abstract

In the field of poetry criticism, there are missing concepts that would permit an understanding of how narration and focalization are productive for the analysis of narrative structures in the lyric, and the further function of reproducing issues that are context sensitive. Narratological categories are especially able to provide solutions to this deficit. Furthermore, critics applying the insights of narrative theory to the analysis of Byron s poetry have not adequately explored the diverse representations and functions of narrative elements that are both text-centered and culture specific. Still, the narrative theory of poetry, the significance of which is often narrowed down to a Formalist orientation (the grammar of narrative and text-centered issues) needs to be invigorated with the insights of both Classical and Post-Classical Narratologies to include cultural categories so that they not only take into account the specific type of narrative in poetry but permit the poetry under study to meet its target objectives of reproducing narrative mediation and to an extent specific contexts by narrative means.To break through theoretical and methodological restrictions in the narrative theory of poetry, the study develops an outline of transgeneric narrative theory of poetry criticism, an innovative conceptualization that permits an inclusion of authorial/heterodiegetic narrator, homodiegetic narrator, reflector, perceptual devices, consciousness representation strategies, tense representations and cultural categories (dealing with questions of colonizer, colonized, subjects and subjectivity, such as perspective structure, metannarative forms and communal voice), to enable the a context-sensitive textual analysis of aspects of narrative poems. The role that narrative representations of narration and focalization can play in the analysis of Byron s poetry is shown in the analysis of about twelve novel-length narrative poems written during the Romantic period. In my analysis, poems like Don Juan and "Child Harold s Pilgrimage", traditionally considered as autobiographies, receive a new interpretive perspective deploying linguistic devices, psychonarration strategies, psychoanalogies, extra-representational strategies and narratee signals to discuss a range of possible meanings including the construction of authorial narrative situation. The thesis also deploys the categories of communal voice, linguistic devices and perspective structure to show that ideologies and culture specific contexts like post colonial issues of colonizer, the colonized, subject, subjectivity and power are present in homodiegetic narratives such as "The Prisoner of Chillon". The study also analyzes third-person narrative poems using the categories of free indirect discourse, psychonarration, interior monologue, stream of consciousness technique, internal, external, and collective focalizations to construct heterodiegetic narration, the reflector mode and focalization aiming to highlight the further functions of narration and focalization in reproducing narrators, and psychological characters. By applying narratological categories to the analysis of texts and contexts in Byron s poetry, it is possible to discuss literary genres that are not traditionally viewed as narratives; to link the poetry under study to traditional and modern narrative prose tradition of Joyce and others, and to speak about social contexts especially considering its sociological relevance. By combining results from Structuralist and Post-Classical theory and Cultural history, the study tries to meet not only the need to provide cornerstones for a Transgeneric Narratology which is still in the process of development but also to demonstrate that a Transgeneric narrative theory of poetry can have a theoretical and analytical relevance in the wider context of research in literary and cultural studies. The intellectual relevance of the approach can also be specifically felt in a context like Cameroon where research in Cameroon novels of English expression can benefit from the comprehensive, theoretical and methodological scope of the approach. Needless to say, research in Cameroon is hampered by limited access to both traditional and Post-Classical Interdisciplinary theories.

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