Point of view

A story = plot + characters + setting + storyteller

↑

narrative voice (real or implied)

presents the story to the reader

Narrative voice = point of view = the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision, form which the story is told. It colors and shapes presentation and perception of everything, including plot, character, and setting.

Alter or change the point of view = alter and change the story.

The choice of point of view = the choice of who is to tell the story, who talks to the reader: - narrator outside the work (omniscient point of view);

• narrator inside the work,

• limited omniscient or first-person point of view;

• no one (dramatic point of view).

depend on the distance that the author wishes to maintain between the reader and the story and the extent to which the author is willing to involve the reader in its interpretation.

The further from omniscience the less is the ability to see into the minds of his characters.

Commonly Used Points of View

1. Omniscient point of view (panoramic, shifting, or multiple point of view),

reader - "all-knowing" narrator – story

↑

full and complete control over the narrative.

≠ a character in the story and is not at all involved in the plot.

Narrator is free to

• tell us much or little,

• to dramatize or summarize,

• to interpret,

• speculate,

• philosophize,

• moralize

• judge

• tell us directly what the characters are like

• why they behave as they do;

• record their words and conversations

• dramatize their actions;

• enter their minds to explore directly their innermost thoughts and feelings.

• move the reader from one event to the next

• skip backward and forward in time, now dramatizing, now summarizing as he chooses.

Typical to the XVIII and XIX cc novels

E.g.: In Thackeray's Vanity Fair the narrator = puppeteer, "the Manager of the Performance", in a manner that may seem offensive and condescending to modern readers who are used to more realistic treatment:

But my kind reader will please to remember that this history has Vanity Fair for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. And while the moralist, who is holding forth on the cover (an accurate portrait of your humble servant), professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but only the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation is arrayed; yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel-hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an undertaking.

– From Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray [1848]

E.g.: Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. It occurs at the very beginning of the seventh chapter as Elizabeth-Jane and her mother arrive at the “Three Mariners Inn”:

Elizabeth-Jane and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier. Outside the house they had stood and considered whether even this homely place, though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious in its prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had found courage to enter, and dully met Stannidge the landlord; a silent man, who drew and carried frothing measures to this room and to that, shoulder to shoulder with his waiting-maids – a stately slowness, however, entering into his ministrations by contrast with theirs, as became one whose service was somewhat optional. It would have been altogether optional but for the orders of the landlady, a person who sat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with a fitting eye and quick ear, with which she observed and heard through the open door and hatchway the pressing needs of customers whom her husband overlooked though close at hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted as sojourners, and shown to a small bedroom under one of the gables, where they sat down.

– From The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy [1886]

Narrator summarizes the action, provides details of setting, and reveals the state of mind of four characters, in turn.

editorial omniscience - narrators comment freely in their own voices, using "I" or the editorial "we," (Thackeray e.g.)

neutral or impartial omniscience - present the thoughts and actions of characters without editorial intrusions (Hardy e.g.)

Omniscience is rarely used in modern literature

The choice of point of view is a matter of appropriateness.

The great advantage – flexibility, "all-knowing" narrator can direct the reader's attention and control the sources of information.