Twelve Important Terms for Monday and Wednesday:

 

1–Focalization: Focalization is essentially the same thing as point of view, which means the perspective from which a story is being told. This term, Focalization, and its related terms, enable us to get a better understanding of how a story works.

2–Internal Focalization: the POV focuses on internal thoughts, emotions, and reflections

3–External Focalization: the POV focuses on actions, behaviors, settings, atmosphere.

4–Focal Distance: the distance between the POV and the character/action being viewed/narrated. In general, the focal distance of external focalization is greater than internal focalization.

Note: Depending upon the situation, differences between internal and external focalization can blur.

Example 1: Reggie saw his own hands trying to help his little green friend. His fingers were wet with swamp water, and behind his eyes, he felt a strangling tightness, as if the nerves and the synapses in his brain were confused, warring against each other, unable to arrive at the right emotion to express.

Example 2: I saw Reggie’s face contorted into anguish because he had just witnessed the terrible death of his pet grasshopper.

Example 3: The grasshopper hopped fast and high for such a small creature. It hopped just ahead of little Reggie. And just then, Reggie’s dad came around the corner of the house pushing the old red lawnmower.

Example 4: As she cleaned up from dinner, Reggie’s mother thought the scene of the grasshopper’s accident was complex. It uncovered the terrible power of the men in her life. And it revealed those past lessons of control: her father’s inability to love her, and the boy’s father’s non-stop work ethic.

 

5–Sarcasm: speech or action that is the opposite from actual words/action. Example:  During a thunderstorm, your friends says “it’s quite nice outside.”

 

6–Paradox: A contradictory statement that, upon closer inspection, resolves itself or contains truth. The key to this complex term is that the opposition forms a relationship. Example: “The son is father to the man.”

 

7–Allegory: As a literary device, an allegory is a narrative in which a character, place, or event is used to deliver a broader message about real-world issues and occurrences. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Example:  Fox and Grapes Allegory

 

8–Flashback: A flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative.

 

9–Irony, in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what is on the surface (or to be expected) differs radically from what is actually the case.

10–Verbal Irony: characters are aware of the irony and intend to create it. In Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony calls Brutus “an honorable man.”

11–Dramatic Irony: characters are unaware of the irony. Example: In The Truman Show, Truman does not know he is the focus of the tv show; and in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo believes Juliet is dead, but the audience knows that she is sleeping.

12–Situational Irony: an action or event the goes agains the expected, and the characters are aware of it (often as the climax of a narrative). Example: Harry Potter’s enemy, Professor Snape, turns out, in the end, to be his protector.

 

HOMEWORK FOR WEDNESDAY, SEPT 22:

Review the above definitions and read the handout on Todorov’s ideas of the Fantastic, Uncanny, and Marvelous–in Readings. Bring to class at least one question on one of the terms or how a term relates to our readings.

 

Best wishes,

Prof. Scanlan