Masarykova univerzita

Fakulta pedagogiky

KATEDRA ANGLICKÉHO JAZYKA A LITERATURY

Construction of Narrative in American Gothic Fiction:

Focalisation in the Works of E. A. Poe

Bakalářská práce

Brno 2014

Vedúci bakalárskej práce: Vypracovala:

PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D. Juliana Tomková 2

Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou bakalářskou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy university a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

V Brne, dňa 20. 4. 2014 ……………………….. Podpis 3

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D., my supervisor, and to all who helped me during my research and contributed to finishing this thesis. Thank you for your support and constructive criticism.

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Abstract

As the name “Construction of Narrative in American Gothic Fiction: Focalisation in the Works of E. A. Poe” suggests, the primary concern of this thesis is the topic of focalization. The aim is to find out whether E. A. Poe was inclined to use a specific kind of focalization in his gothic stories, whether he was consistent in using it, and how closely is focalization connected to other elements of narrative in his stories. In the theoretical part the genre and history of Gothic literature introduced to show development and features of Gothic, then construction of narrative is outlined so that the place of focalization among other elements of narrative can be determined, and finally several views of literary theorists on the concept of focalization are explored. In the practical part, three of Poe’s short stories are analysed and looked at from structuralist point of view; the construction of narrative is discussed attentively, with the emphasis on focalization, and attention is paid also to the gothic features of the chosen stories. The results of the analysis attempt to offer some insight into the problematic concept of focalization and its manifestation and use in gothic stories.

Anotácia

Hlavným záujmom tejto práce je predmet fokalizácie, ako naznačuje aj názov (voľne preložený ako) „Konštrukcia príbehu v americkej gotickej fikcii: Fokalizácia v dielach e. A. Poea“. Naším cieľom je zistiť, či E. A. Poe vo svojich gotických poviedkach inklinoval k určitému druhu fokalizácie, či je používaná konzistentne a ako veľmi je spätá s ostatnými časťami konštrukcie príbehu. V teoretickej časti je uvedená história a žáner gotickej literatúry aby sa ukázali znaky a vývoj gotiky; nasleduje náčrt konštrukcie príbehu aby sa objasnilo miesto fokalizácie medzi ostatnými časťami konštrukcie príbehu; nakoniec sa pozrieme ako koncept fokalizácie vnímajú rôzni literárni teoretici. Praktická časť pozostáva z analýzy troch gotických poviedok od Poea, na ktoré sa pozrieme z uhlu pohľadu štrukturalistov. Pozorne sa bude rozoberať konštrukcia príbehu s dôrazom na fokalizáciu. Pozornosť sa bude venovať aj gotickým prvkom vybraných príbehov. Výsledkami analýzy sa pokúšame osvetliť problematický koncept fokalizácie, rovnako ako aj jej využitie a prejavy v gotických poviedkach.

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Contents

Introduction ...... 7 Theoretical part ...... 8 1. History and characteristics of Fantasy and Gothic fiction ...... 8 1.1. Fantasy literature ...... 8 1.2. Gothic Fiction ...... 9 1.2.1. American Gothic ...... 10 2. Construction of Narrative ...... 12 2.1. Peter Barry ...... 13 2.1.1. Focalization of narrative ...... 13 2.1.2. Basic narrative mode ...... 14 2.1.3. Telling the story ...... 14 2.1.4. Time in the story ...... 15 2.1.5. ‘Packaging’ ...... 15 2.1.6. Speech and thought representation ...... 16 3. Focalization ...... 17 3.1. Gérard Genette ...... 17 3.1.1. Genette’s typology of focalization ...... 18 3.2. Alan Palmer ...... 19 3.3. Mieke Bal ...... 21 Practical part ...... 23 4. Analysis ...... 23 4.1. The Tell-Tale Heart ...... 23 4.1.1. Overview of the plot...... 23 4.1.2. Fantasy and gothic elements ...... 24 4.1.3. Construction of narrative – focalization ...... 26 4.1.4. Other components of narrative ...... 29 4.2. The Premature Burial ...... 31 4.2.1. Overview of the plot...... 31 4.2.2. Fantasy and gothic elements ...... 31 4.2.3. Construction of narrative – Focalization ...... 33 4.2.4. Construction of narrative – Other components of narrative ...... 36 4.3. The Oval Portrait ...... 38 6

4.3.1. Overview of the plot...... 38 4.3.2. Fantasy and gothic elements ...... 39 4.3.3. Construction of narrative – Focalization ...... 40 4.3.4. Construction of narrative – Other components of narrative ...... 41 Conclusion ...... 45 Works Cited ...... 50

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Introduction

The idea of composing a work on the theory of literature has arisen mostly from the author’s personal interests. The title of this thesis: Construction of Narrative in American Gothic Fiction reflects our attempt to look at the chosen topic from structuralist point of view. The subtitle: Focalisation in the Works of E. A. Poe narrows the field of our interest to a particular literary aspect of Poe’s short stories. In this thesis, we will try to present several views of the concept of focalisation by some well known literary theorists as Gerard Genette, Mieke Bal, Peter Barry or Alan Palmer, and show how it is presented in Poe’s work. Moreover, as narrative and narrative texts should be looked at as something complex that cannot be separated into independent parts (despite the fact that the various components of stories can be named, characterised, and categorised into system applicable to many different pieces of literature), we will also search for interconnectedness of these parts with focalisation and try to hint at their mutual influence.

The initial part of the theoretical section of this thesis discusses fantasy literature and development of American Gothic fiction. After the introduction of the genre we will present Peter Barry’s interpretation of the work by Gérard Genette – Narrative Discourse – dealing with main aspects of narration (telling a story). We will explain what we understand under the term “construction of narrative” and what elements it consists of, and show the aspects of focalization as an inseparable part of the whole construction.

The practical part consists of analysis of three chosen Poe’s short stories. We will attempt to find the signs that label them as gothic stories, and search for the traces of focalization in them, applying Genette’s typology. Our aim is not only to find out whether Poe was inclined to use a specific kind of focalization in his gothic stories (and possibly to discover reasons behind his choice), but also whether he was consistent in using it, and how closely is focalization connected to other parts of narrative in his stories. We expect the answer to ‘consistency’ part be negative as Poe undoubtedly was a pioneer in literary field and therefore was prone to experimenting. He himself emphasises the importance of “[k]eeping originality always in view”(Poe, Essays 13).

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Theoretical part

1. History and characteristics of Fantasy and Gothic fiction As we set for our goal analysing narrative in American Gothic fiction, it is advisable first to define this genre. We will begin by broader definition of fantasy literature as such, and then proceed with Gothic fiction which is a branch of fantasy, and, at last, we will discuss the American gothic fiction specifically. We will look at historical development of the genre, and also, we will search for particular authors that contributed the most in making the American literature truly ‘American’ and shaped the core of American Gothic.

1.1. Fantasy literature Fantasy is a very broad term and opinions of many theorists on this topic differ. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn in the introduction to The Cambridge Companion To Fantasy Literature (2012) wrote, that “Fantasy is not so much a mansion as a row of terraced houses, such as the one that entranced us in C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew with its connecting attics, each with a door that leads into another world”(1). In Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature, the term fantasy is defined as “Imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting (such as other worlds or times) and of characters (such as supernatural or unnatural beings)”(406). How long can be the list of fantasy pieces when we apply such definition, describes Jones:

The terms fantasy and the *fantastic are often used interchangeably to describe a metagenre of disparate works characterized by a degree of explicit anti-realism and embracing *horror, high fantasy, dark fantasy, *science fiction, *cyberpunk, futurism, *Gothic fiction, ghost stories, *magical realism, *counterfactual histories, *myths, *folklore and *fairy tales.(Jones 160)

One of the latest contributions in the field of theory on fantasy is Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008). She says “there are four distinct modes of fantasy, defined by the way in which the fantastic enters the text and the rhetorical voices which are required to construct the different types of worlds which emerge”(James and Mendlesohn 2). She continues by describing the four categories:

In the portal-quest, the protagonist enters a new world; in the immersive, the protagonist is part of the fantastic world; in the intrusion, the fantastic breaks into the primary world 9

(which might or might not be our own); and in the luminal, magic might or might not be happening.(James and Mendlesohn 2)

She speculates over effectiveness of combination of categories and voice and uses this system for evaluating fantasy. She explains that “an immersive fantasy that uses the rhetorical (and over-explanatory) voice of a portal-quest fantasy is … unlikely to be effective”(James and Mendlesohn 2).

This distinction based on rhetorical voices and entering of the fantastic to the text seems reasonable and is very clear, however, it could not, by far, cover all of the aspects of fantasy, even if such ‘covering’ would be possible. Despite this drawback, we will apply Mendlesohn’s theory when analysing Poe’s stories, because, as will be discussed in more detail in the chapter on Gothic fiction, fantastic and supernatural are characteristic of this genre, and therefore the way these components step into the story is of our interest.

1.2. Gothic Fiction To get an overview of Gothic fiction, we will now look at the beginnings of this genre, the origins of its name, and also, we will mention the most significant and influential works of Gothic. But first, let us define the term ‘gothic’; according to Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature (1995), it can refer to:

1. […] a late 18th- and early 19th-century style of fiction characterized by the use of medieval settings, a murky atmosphere of horror and gloom, and macabre, mysterious, and violent incidents. 2. […] a literary style or an example of such style characterized by grotesque, macabre, or fantastic incidents or by an atmosphere of irrational violence, desolation, and decay.(Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature 480)

In his essay ‘Gothic and horror fiction’ (2012), Adam Roberts searches for the connection of the Goths (“a Germanic people who left their original homes in Southern Scandinavia about the beginning of the Christian era”(Roberts 21)) and the reason for the name of gothic literature. He says: “The word Goth, according to etymologists, is derived from a Proto-Germanic word, *geutan, meaning ‘to pour’ or ‘to flow’ ... [and that like the Goths, Gothic literature] has demonstrated a restless fluidity of situation”(22). According to Roberts, another link between the Gothic people and Gothic literature can be seen in 10

architecture. What we now know as Gothic style or architecture was originally called ‘the French style’; however, during the age of Neoclassicism and Enlightenment, Gothic style lost its popularity and was thought rather ‘barbaric’(Roberts 22). People started to call it ‘gothic’ (for the Goths were well-known barbaric tribe), and it meant “barbarous ... [and] anti- enlightenment”(Roberts 22), which was deliberately a pejorative term.

Roberts, as well as many other scholars, considers publishing of The Castle of Otranto (1764) as a turning point that made Gothic fiction fashionable. However, at the time of publishing, anything ‘gothic’ was still looked at as unpopular, and the author, Horace Walpole, wrote the book anonymously, under the pretence it is an English translation of a story from 11th or 12th century (Roberts 23). Roberts says that this “anonymous first edition opens with a preface … and apologizes for the supernatural elements of the narrative”(23). In the second edition, however, Walpole makes his authorship known and defends his tale. According to Roberts, the book can be viewed as “celebration of the anarchic imaginative possibilities [this] new sort of writing permits”(23), and the story is “rather hectic ... as often laughable as alarming”(25). About Gothic literature in general he says that it “is often genuinely horrific and full of terrors. … But at the same time … Gothic (as fantasy) is ludicrous”(28). However, he does not see this as a necessarily bad thing. He says that fantasy is the only genre where mocking helps its popularity and as the examples he mentions parodies of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien or Terry Pratchett’s works (28). Another example of influential but also mocking piece, as Roberts says, is Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein where “genuine pathos in the monster’s loneliness, and a flavour of sublime”(31) is combined with ludicrous idea of the monster acquiring speaking, writing and reading skills by eavesdropping. He continues his argument saying that Frankenstein started the trend of ‘supernatural monsters’ as vampires, werewolves and others appear afterwards (Roberts 31). “What all these monsters have in common is their protean ability to transform, to move from unexceptional ‘human’ behaviour to barbaric, violent … they are emblematizations of the protean force of the Gothic novel itself”(31).

1.2.1. American Gothic Now we will look more closely at the beginnings and main characteristics of American Gothic fiction. Marc Amfreville, in his contribution in A New Literary History of America 11

(2009) looks into historical circumstances after the War of independence and asks the question what authors of a newborn country needed “to produce a literature so essentially different that it would be recognised as ‘American’?”(133) He explains that as the American writers used the same language as British writers, they had to “find a new tessitura, an originality that went way beyond settings and themes”(133).

We ask: Who stands behind the birth of truly American Gothic? Martin Procházka answers this question in his book The Lectures on American Literature (2002); according to him, the two pioneers are Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) and his successor Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). They “transferred the Romantic sublime from the vast spaces of nature, haunted castles and horrid dungeons to the dark recesses of the human mind”(Procházka 67). Their styles, despite the fact that they are both Gothic writers, differ. In the works of Charles Brockden Brown, we can find two distinct features, Procházka explains; one is his use of “psychological narrative technique ... [that] does not convey ideas but evokes moods which take possession of the reader”(67). The other feature is Brown’s “interest in the workings of abstract reason […] and the creation of utopias”(68). Similarly to European (not only Gothic) literature, among the themes of his works appears also “the difficulty of understanding human nature”(Procházka 69); it can be seen, as Procházka explains, in his novel Wieland, or the Transformation (1798) where there is a “shift from the divine to human scope of power”(70).

Edgar Allan Poe is known as a poet, short story writer, and literary critic. Procházka notes that the main difference between Poe and Brown is the former’s “use of grotesque and the free play of imagination”(71) as demonstrated in Poe’s collection of short stories Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Poe himself, in the letter to T.L. White (30 April 1845), wrote what about his work had made it so successful: “the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical”(qtd. in Procházka, p. 71). Another significant features of Poe’s works, as Procházka points out, are his characters that suffer from madness or undergo altered state of mind, hallucination, or “mesmerism [...] and his machine-like construction of plot”(72) that can be seen in his story ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ where “the mathematical game of horror is simulated by the changes of the movement of the pendulum, sliding of prison walls”(72). Among other Poe’s notable works belong also his critical essays ‘The Philosophy of 12

composition’, ‘The Poetic Principle’ and ‘The Rationale of Verse’ – all of these discuss “[r]ational and deliberate literary composition”(Procházka 72) Poe used in his writing (Procházka 71-2).

2. Construction of Narrative

Gerald Prince, in his essay “On Narratology (Past, Present, Future)” (2000), says that “narrative can have any number of functions (entertaining, informing, persuading ... ) [but] is also a particular mode of knowledge”(129). This agrees with the claim Roland Barthes made back in 1966: “The narratives of the world are numberless ... [can] be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures ... narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale novella, epic, history ... painting”(qtd. in McQuillan 2). Such broad definitions can evoke the feeling that there must be many ways of analysing the construction of narrative if by narrative can be called anything from an ordinary joke to tragedy. Indeed, we would not like to be so bold as to claim that the approach we are going to apply is the only correct. However, one must choose (if not create) a certain theory in order to use it in their analysis. And we decided to look at the written form of narrative from a structuralist point of view. Roland Barthes in ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’ (2000) says that “[t]o understand a narrative is not merely to follow the unfolding of the story, it is also to recognize its construction in ‘stories’ ... to read (to listen to) a narrative is not merely to move from one word to the next, it is also to move from one level to the next”(112). We will look at this ‘construction in stories’, more precisely, we will focus on “the process of telling [the story] itself ... the act of narration”(Barry 222-3). For purposes of this thesis, Peter Barry’s interpretation of Narrative Discourse (1972) by Gérard Genette is going to be used, as the original work is too extensive (for Genette’s original division of the field of narratology see p. 17). We need just an overview of the main areas, the parts that create narrative, to see the role of focalisation among them and to illustrate the basic connection and influence between focalization and the other parts. Therefore, the terminology will be introduced only briefly and only minor attention will be paid to it in the analysis, except for focalization, which will be discussed more deeply in the subsequent chapter. 13

2.1. Peter Barry

Peter Barry, in his book Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (2009)1, presents a very comprehensible interpretation of Gérard Genette's Narrative Discourse (1972). He divides Genette’s theory, which focuses on telling the story, into six main areas, and adds his own observations. These six areas, according to us, constitute the construction of narrative, create its skeleton. By introducing all six of them, we attempt to demonstrate the connection between focalization2 and the other parts of the construction of narrative, and we will comment on importance of every area in respect to the field of our study.

2.1.1. Focalization of narrative Barry understands focalization as “the point-of-view from which the story is told”(224). He introduces three main possibilities, while reminding there are many more. The first is so called ‘external focalisation’; this means “the viewpoint is outside the character”(Barry 224) and we hear and see only things we would normally hear and see if we were a part of the scene. When the writer wants us to know what the character feels and thinks without saying it aloud, he or she uses ‘internal focalisation’ and we have an access to the character’s mind (Barry 224). Now let us look at the examples Barry used to describe external and internal focalization, respectively: “Thelma stood up and called out to Mario. [...] Thelma suddenly felt anxious that Mario was not going to see her and would walk by oblivious on the other side of Charing Cross Road”(224). He explains that the main character who perceives most of the time is “called the ‘focaliser’ of the tale (or the ‘reflector’, in another tradition of narratological terms)”(225). In this specific case, Thelma’s story is told in the third person but in the second sentence, information is delivered from her point-of-view (we know about her inner reactions and thoughts). There is another kind of focalization, called ‘zero focalisation’, that uses this method, however, in this way, minds of more than one character

1 The first edition of the book was published in 1995 2 The terms ‘focalization’ and ‘focalisation’ are used interchangeably; however, to avoid confusion, we will use the term ‘focalization’, except when directly quoting Barry, who prefers the term ‘focalisation’. 14

are accessed (Barry 224-5). We will pay closer attention to this concept in the chapter 3 (following) on focalization.

2.1.2. Basic narrative mode Narrative can take two modes – ‘mimetic’ or ‘diegetic’. “Mimesis means ‘showing’ or ‘dramatising’”(Barry 223). Mimetic narrative is ‘dramatised’ and uses direct speech, therefore the readers have feeling they are witnessing the scene happening; it is called ‘slow telling’(Barry 223). On the other hand, as says Barry, in diegetic narrative “the narrator just says what happens, without trying to show as it happens”(223); the aim is to deliver message quickly, summarize vital information, without any illusion that what is said happens before our eyes – “diegesis means ‘telling’ or ‘relating’”(223). The concept of the two is quite old, as it was Plato who came up with the distinction (Barry 223). Usually, writers switch between the modes. As Barry explains, they need to do it because “an entirely mimetic novel would tend to be infinitely long, and an entirely diegetic one could hardly be more than couple of pages”(223).

This distinction between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ is vital namely for short stories, where authors are pressed to condense information and descriptions. Undoubtedly, it depends on author’s skill how he or she threats and switches between them. However, we must realise that when we use a certain type of focalization (for example internal) it can pose limits to what we can write about, what we (through the eyes of our characters) see. Therefore, we could be limited in ‘showing’ in the way that we cannot show what the focalizer, does not see. By no means does this signify that it is not possible to use showing while using internal focalization. We merely wanted to point out, in what way focalization and narrative mode are connected and that focalization directly influences the text.

2.1.3. Telling the story To tell their story, authors use a narrator. According to Barry, the main distinction that can be made is between a narrator “who is identified as a distinct, named character, with a personal history, gender [etc. and a narrator who is] just a voice or a tone, […] a mere ‘telling medium’ which strives for neutrality and transparency”(225). Barry calls the first type “’overt’ or ‘dramatised’ or ‘intrusive’ narrator”(226), introducing as an example Mr Lockwood in Wuthering Heights by Brontë. He further specifies him to be ‘heterodiegetic‘, as 15

he does not participate in the story he is telling; he is an ‘outsider’. The opposite of ‘heterodiegetic’ is ‘homodiegetic’; as Genette said, a homodiegetic narrator “is present as a character in the story he tells”(qtd. in Barry, p. 226). The second type of narrator is “’covert’, ‘effaced’, ‘nonintrusive’, or ‘non-dramatised’”(225) as Barry puts it, and is used with zero- focalisation mentioned in the point 2.1.1. above (Barry 225).

This shows that choice of a narrator can directly influence our options for choosing focalization and the other way around, and we consider these two categories (focalization and a choice of narrator) to be the most closely connected from all parts of the construction of narrative.

2.1.4. Time in the story Events in the story often do not follow chronologically. Barry says that narrative in the story can ‘flash back’ as well as ‘flash forward’ (not so usual). Corresponding story parts are called ‘analeptic’ and ‘proleptic’, respectively, and authors use them for strategic purposes. (Barry, 226-7)

This aspect of narration is equally important as all the others, as it contributes to uniqueness of every single literary piece. However, we do not expect the order in which events in a story are related to directly influence the kind of focalization used, therefore we will treat this matter only to such extent as to confirm our claim.

2.1.5. ‘Packaging’ In this section Barry deals with ‘frame narratives’ or ‘primary narratives’ and ‘embedded narratives’, which can be contained in them. As an example he introduces Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; in both of the works is used ‘primary’ and ‘secondary narrative’ (227). By primary narrative is understood the narrative which comes first and is not necessarily the main narrative (Barry 227); the secondary “is the one which comes second and is embedded into the primary narrative”(Barry 227) and is often what is considered to be the main story. Instead of the term ‘embedded narratives’, Genette uses the term ‘meta-narratives’ and he simply describes it as “a narrative within the narrative”(qtd. in Barry 227). Frame narratives can be further divided into ‘single-ended’ (primary narrative starts the story, however it is ended by secondary narrative), ‘double- ended’ (primary narrative starts and also ends the story, secondary narrative is in between), 16

and ‘intrusive’ (secondary narrative contained in primary narrative is interrupted by primary narrative) (Barry 227-8).

Both of the examples Barry introduced are of a definitely longer genre than short stories we are going to analyse. This leads us to a question, whether it is only a coincidence or embedding is not very effectively used in shorter compositions. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (2005), we can find William Nelles’s contribution that says: “examination of almost any body of texts reveals that the structure of embedded narrative is ubiquitous in the literature of all cultures and periods”(134). Indeed, during our research we encountered such a kind of embedded story in Poe’s story ‘The Oval Portrait’.

2.1.6. Speech and thought representation Direct speech is always marked by inverted commas; ‘tagging’ is the term for phrases accompanying direct speech (Barry 229). Barry introduces several kinds of speeches; all the following examples of speech categories are adopted from his book Beginning Theory: An Introduction to literary and Cultural Theory (2009):

- ‘direct and tagged’: ‘What’s your name?’ Mario asked her. ‘It’s Thelma,’ she replied. - ‘direct and untagged’: ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Thelma.’ - ‘direct and selectively tagged’: ‘What’s your name?’ asked Mario. ‘Thelma.’ - ‘tagged indirect speech’: He asked her what her name was, and she told him it was Thelma. - ‘free indirect speech’: What was her name? It was Thelma.

The reason why we decided to include this distinction is that it will help us to identify the type of focalization used in analysed texts. The last category of ‘free indirect speech’, says Barry, “seems to suit an internally focalised narrative, since it seems natural to ‘glide’ from it into recording the thoughts and feelings of the speaker,”(230). Here is the example he uses to illustrate its subtleness: “What was her name? It was Thelma. Thelma, was it? Not the kind of name to launch a thousand ships. More of a suburban, lace-curtain sort of name, really”(230).

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3. Focalization

The following pages discuss the concept of focalisation from different points of view of several literary theorists. We will introduce them briefly, starting with a short introduction of the term, then proceeding with the original concept of focalization by Gérard Genette, then Allan Palmer, who employs various narratological approaches in describing and defining his ‘fictional minds’, and in the end, the theory of Mieke Bal will be presented.

Gérard Genette introduced the term focalization into the field of narratology in 1980; since then, theorists such as Mieke Bal, Manfred Jahn or David Herman explored the topic and produced their own explanations with several changes (Palmer 48). Among them are also some, who are not so supportive of the theory – for example Monika Flundernik, who, quite sceptic of the concept, says about focalization that its “precise definition has … never been agreed upon and is still open to remapping”(qtd. in Palmer 48). That theories on this topic differ, are ambiguous or even contradictory, can be seen even in our far from exhaustive list. Quite clear and short definition offers Allan Palmer, who views focalization as “the perspective, angle of vision, or point of view from which events are related”(48). However, we must beware of confusing the concept of focalisation which, according to Genette, deals with the question “who perceives?”(qtd. in Jahn 174)3, with the concept of point of view and narration, dealing with the question “who speaks?”(qtd. in Jahn 173). Wayne Booth points out “how little difference this choice [of point of view] makes”(73) as far as the effect on the reader is concerned. He continues explaining that what is important are “the forms the author’s voice can take ... [and trying] to describe any of them with terms like ‘first-person’ and ‘omniscient’ tells us little about how they differ from each other”(69).

3.1. Gérard Genette

Genette splits narratological field into three parts – ‘tense’, ‘mood’ and ‘voice’ – explains Jahn in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (2005, 173). He further elaborates on the distinction saying that while the ‘tense’ category deals with “the

3 The original question was “who sees”, however, Genette himself later proposed, we should instead use the question “who perceives” as the former was rather “vision oriented”(Jahn, p. 174) and there are other senses through which characters can perceive the events. 18

possibilities of temporal arrangement and presentation”(173), the ‘voice’ category comments on “narrators, narrative *embedding (*framed narrative), and the choice of grammatical *person”(173), and the category of ‘mood’ is concerned with “the regulation of narrative information ... presenting action, speech, thought ... [as well as] selection and restriction of the information conveyed by a narrative”(173). Focalization belongs into this last category, and its core lays in already mentioned ‘selection’ and ‘restriction’ (Jahn 173). In other words, “focalization theory covers the various means of regulating, selecting, and channelling narrative information, particularly of seeing *events from somebody’s point of view, no matter how subjective or fallible this point of view might turn out to be”(Jahn 173).4

3.1.1. Genette’s typology of focalization Genette distinguishes three main types of focalization according to “degrees of restrictions of narrative information”(Jahn 173):

I. non-focalization or zero focalization – “events are narrated from a wholly unrestricted or omniscient point of view”(Jahn 173). II. internal focalization – events are presented from “the point of view, perception, and cognition of a focal character”(Jahn 173).5 This category is further divided into three parts according to the number of focal characters used and the repetition of events. i. Fixed focalization – events are seen through the eyes of one focal character (Jahn 174). ii. Variable focalization – “presents different story episodes through the eyes of different focal characters”(Jahn 174). iii. Multiple focalization – the scene is presented several times, every time seen through a different focal character (Jahn 174). III. external focalization – is “restricted to behaviourist report and outside views, basically reporting what would be visible to a camera”(Jahn 174).

When we use this typology in our analysis, we must remember that “the main types ... apply at both local and global levels of analysis, whereas the subtypes ... obtain globally

4 Here the author refers to the possibility, that the story can be narrated by an unreliable narrator or a character who is biased, therefore, the information we are given in the narrative might be false. 5 If there is a focal character in the story that uses internal focalization, it means that “the presentation of events is restricted to the point of view, perception and cognition”(Jahn 173) of this character. 19

(across whole texts) only”(Jahn 173). Therefore, we will always distinguish, whether we look at the text as a whole or only at specific passages.

3.2. Alan Palmer

Alan Palmer, in his book Fictional Minds (2004), deals with the topic of focalisation in the chapter ‘Some narratological approaches’. The reason he included it, as he says, is because “[t]he concept of focalization has a good deal of potential as one tool among others for the examination of the presentation of fictional minds”(48). He explores the ways in which the concept of focalisation can be applied in construction and categorisation of fictional minds. He focuses on a technique known as free indirect perception. The distinction he makes is that between ‘physical’ or ‘narratorial’ description of events, and a character’s perception of events. To explain the difference between the two, he uses this example: “’He sat on the bench. The train pulled away.’”(48-9). He says that the second sentence can be considered merely a physical description of the event (48), however, depending on the context, it can be also viewed as “the character’s perception of physical event and, even more importantly, by extension, the character’s experience of the psychological implications of the event”(49); the context can reveal a character’s feelings connected to the departure of the train (Palmer 48). This distinction is important, as “[a] free indirect perception reading takes responsibility for subjectivity away from the narrator, where it initially appears to be, and gives it to a character”(Palmer 49).

It is important to realise that such a distinction, when applied out of context, can be misleading. Therefore, when analysing particular sequences of the text, we must bear in mind Genette’s types and subtypes of focalisation and that only some of them can be applied in local analysis, as in this case. Otherwise we could mistakenly assume that the author is constantly switching between two kinds of focalization and is inconsistent in his style. Indeed, as will be shown in our analysis, author can and does switch between various kinds of focalization, whether for artistic reasons or because it is impossible and undesirable to use “I” or “he” etc. in every single sentence just to clarify who perceives the events.

Palmer too, perceives the concept of focalization as a bit problematic, especially when it comes to dealing with fictional minds, because, as he explains focalization is often limited 20

to perception and emotions, cognition, dispositions and other mental functions of characters are not taken into consideration (49-51). He further familiarizes us with Bal’s and Searle’s theory to argue his point:

Within Bal’s scheme, in first-person novels the introspecting character has three functions: as the narrator, as the internal focalizer (1997, 148) and as what she calls the non-perceptible focalized object (1997, 153). In the case of third-person narration, the narrator has at least one function: as external narrator. The character has at least one function: the non-perceptible focalized object. Opinion is divided who has the external focalizer function.(Palmer 49)

Palmer explains this concept using a simple example “’I felt happy’”(49) where “I” has three functions: “the “I” who is reporting the feeling; the “I” who is having the feeling; and the “I” who is both having the feeling and is aware of the feeling”(50). This is the point Searle disagrees with. “The “I” who is feeling happy cannot be separated from the same “I” who is introspectively aware of the feeling of happiness”(qtd. in Palmer 50). Palmer concludes Searle’s point saying “the distinction between the internal focalizer and the non-perceptible focalized object is a false one”(50). Should the example be changed into third-person narration (“‘He felt happy’”(Palmer 50)), it will not be clear, who the focalizer is. Palmer looks at the explanation of Rimmon-Kenan, whose theory claims that it is ‘external narrator- focalizer’ we have in this case. The opinions of theorists differ, though, and some see this example as the case where “the narrative is focalized … from the point of view of the character”(Palmer 50). Palmer’s next example illustrates the dilemma quickly, everything depends only on what theory is applied:

“He felt happy and she felt happy too.” Within the first approach the focalizer is the external narrator-focalizer. Within the second approach, there are two focalizers: the internal- character focalizer “he” for the first part of the sentence; and the internal character-focalizer “she” for the second part of the sentence.(Palmer 50)

Palmer summarizes his view on the whole matter of focalization – “whenever events occur in the storyworld, they are always experienced from within a certain vision”(51-2) – as opposed to that of Mieke Bal, who says “whenever events are presented, they are always presented from within a certain vision”(qtd. in Palmer 51). 21

The difference between the two seems to lie in what we focus on. If we, like Palmer, focus on the character (who has a mind), we have to realize that for this character, events in the ‘storyworld’ where he or she lives occur, and he or she does not have power over everything. However, when we look at this from structuralist point of view, like Bal, we try to describe a work of an author, its structure; and as the author has power over what happens in the story, the events are therefore presented, they do not just occur, there is intention.

3.3. Mieke Bal

Mieke Bal thoroughly analysed Genette’s categories of ‘mood’ and ‘voice’ in her essay ‘Narration and Focalization’ (1983)6. We will now present shortly what she considers to be most original about Genette’s theory and what flaws she sees in his concept of focalization. In the introduction of her analysis, Bal states that uniqueness of Genette’s work “lies in separating two categories that are ordinarily combined – the categories of perspective and narrative agent”(129). The categories belong to mood and voice, in this order (Bal 129). She briefly summaries Genette’s typology of focalization:

The narrative in which the narrator “says more than any of the characters knows” is the “non-focalized” narrative. If the narrator “says only what a given character knows,” the narrative has “internal focalization,” whether the focalized text be fixed, variable, or multiple. ... The third type is the narrative with “external focalization,” in which the narrator “says less than the character knows,” with the latter thus presented from the outside.(Bal 131)7

Bal sees inconsistencies in the criteria that stand for these three categories. She argues that while “moving from the first type to the third, the narrator’s ‘knowledge’ diminishes, and in this sense the series is homogeneous ... the difference does not have to do with point of view or focalization”(136). She compares non-focalized and internally focalized narrative and says “[t]he difference lies in the agent ‘who sees’”(136); in both cases it is the narrator, but in non-focalized narrative he “sees more than the character”(136) while in internally focalized narrative he “sees ‘with’ the character”(136). Whereas in

6 The essay was originally printed in Style (1983); in this thesis is used reprinted version from Structuralism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, 2nd vol., listed on Works Cited page. 7 The quotations Bal used in this part of her text are from Narrative discourse by G. Genette, p. 189. 22

narrative with external focalization the character “does not see, s/he is seen. The difference … is not between the ‘seeing’ agents, but between the objects of that seeing”(Bal 136). This, according to her, means that Genette’s “typology ... cannot be defined by focalization – whose definition needs more precision – but solely and entirely by the narrator’s knowledge”(136). Her concept of focalization differs from Genette’s mainly in the way that she views it as “a necessary rather that an optional feature of narrative texts”(Jahn 174).

We acknowledge Bal’s point, and agree that focalization is inseparable part of narrative. However, in our analysis, we will stick to Genette’s typology and look at who offers information in the analysed texts, as according to us, even if the character in externally focalized narrative is seen, there is always someone who offers information – the narrator who perceives and sees the character.

23

Practical part

4. Analysis

This chapter covers the analysis of three selected gothic stories by E. A. Poe. Every story will be shortly introduced (including plot overview), the next follows the discussion on fantasy and gothic elements, and as the last comes the analysis of construction of narrative, divided into two parts: ‘focalization’ and ‘other components of narrative’. In the latter Peter Barry’s interpretation of Genette’s Narrative Discourse (1972) will be applied.

4.1. The Tell-Tale Heart

This story, just about six pages long, may be considered one of the scariest Poe wrote. Shall we, however, label it as a gothic story just because it is scary? Certainly not. What does, however, help it to inspire dread? Does focalization play any role in the tension? We will look for these answers in our analysis. After a short overview of the plot we will look at the signs that make this story a good representative of its genre. Then we will proceed to the construction of narrative in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, look at the connection of all the Peter Barry’s areas listed in the theoretical part with the main focus on focalization.

4.1.1. Overview of the plot As is typical for Poe’s short stories, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is told in the first person. The narrator is the main protagonist of the story, our focal character, however, we are not entrusted with the information connected to the narrator’s name, age, nor even gender; he starts his story with a revelation of his obsession – funnily enough – it is obsession with an eye of his master (we cannot be even sure of their occupation, but we guess from the story that the narrator is probably the old man’s assistant). He describes how the illness “sharpened” his senses, tries to persuade us he is not mad, and tells how “cunningly” he got himself rid of the eye. He describes how he spied on the old man when he was asleep, how he slowly opened the door of the man’s bedroom and peeked inside the absolute darkness, night after night. At last, he killed the old man, when the light from a lantern revealed the 24

“vulture eye”. He butchered his victim and hid the corpse under the wooden planks in their house. Then the police comes (allegedly a neighbour reported hearing a shriek) and the narrator invites them inside – to the room where man’s body is buried. They talk, at first lightly, however, mental instability of the narrator soon betrays him and under the pressure of his obsessive thoughts – he is sure he hears a beating heart – he is forced to reveal what he committed.

4.1.2. Fantasy and gothic elements In the first chapter (p. 7-8) we discussed the world of fantasy and introduced Mendlesohn’s typology (2012) of categorization of fantasy literature according to how the fantastic enters the world. In ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ there are no dragons, no mysterious powers creeping in the darkest pitch of night to do harm. There is little that could be called ‘supernatural’ straight away; ‘unnatural’ sounds like a more proper word for describing what is going on in the story. The narrator himself calls what happened to him a disease – a completely normal thing, save that his new sharper senses seem to be of supernatural quality. He perceives and describes strange things – like sounds we know are impossible to hear: “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth”(Poe, Tales 267). However, the rest of the world seems to be normal, we nearly have a feeling that this story might have happened in a neighbouring town. From the four choices Mendlesohn offers, two categories of fantasy – the immersive or the intrusion – seem to be the most suitable. The immersive, defined as a kind of fantasy where “the protagonist is part of the fantastic world” (James and Mendlesohn 2) is the first possibility, because our narrator is part of the fantastic world, where, obviously, somebody can suffer such a strange disease as his. However, we can view the disease itself as an intrusion – “the fantastic breaks into the primary world” (James and Mendlesohn 2) – with the disease erupting, a narrator discovers not a new world but views his old world with new, better eyes. From what the narrator tells us: “The disease had sharpened my senses”(Poe, Tales 267) we can assume that he was not always like this; there was ‘before’ when his senses were not so acute. However, we do not witness this change, therefore a label ‘immersive fantasy’ would suit more in this case. Though fantastic elements may be a bit confusing, the gothic elements in this story are more clearly pronounced. This is one of the reasons we decided to pick this particular short story for our analysis. The protagonist is haunted by his own thoughts, which are dark 25

– dark as the intentions of murdering someone can be; „[the idea] haunted me“(Poe, Tales 267) he says. It may be taken as a figure of speech, however, we may take it literally as well, knowing, that the narrator is truly obsessed, even scared by such thoughts. This obsession is an example of “the dark recesses of the human mind”(67) Procházka mentions as a feature of American Gothic. In the following excerpt is shown irrationality of narrator’s obsession and his fear, and reasons for killing that a sound mind cannot comprehend:

I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. ... I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! ... Whenever it fell upon me, my blood run cold; and so by degrees – very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever. (Poe, Tales 267)

Such reasoning is rather disturbing and its placement in the introduction of the story unmistakably sets a murky, even horrific atmosphere so typical for gothic stories (Merriam Webster’s, 1995); and what is more, from the next steps of the narrator we quickly understand he is not to be stopped in executing his plans, what only adds to the creepiness of it all. The next trace of gothic we observed is what was already described in the chapter on gothic, and what Roberts calls the “protean ability to transform, to move from unexceptional ‘human’ behaviour to barbaric, violent”(2012, 31). As the narrator watches his victim sleeping every night (and the door is never locked), we can assume that the old man suspected nothing and that the narrator behaved his normal “human” self, when in his presence. The narrator confirms this when he says: “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.”(Poe, Tales 267) The sentence is uttered in a cold manner, without a hint of remorse, what only persuades us further about how dangerous and unstable the narrator is, how quickly he can change from a servile assistant to a mindless killer, from a human to a beast. However, such an utterance can sound quite humorously, too, as we normally look for a reason behind the murder, we look for some kind of logic explanation – for example a great anger or jealousy – therefore being kind to our victim seems like an oxymoron. And this is yet another feature of gothic literature – in a way, horrors described are so horrific they are funny, and the fact we found such an instance supports Roberts’s claim that “Gothic (as fantasy) is ludicrous.”(28) The procedure, the steps the murderer takes before he actually 26

commits the crime are laughable. And the narrator is aware of it: “... and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! ... It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha!”(Poe, Tales 267) Another feature worth mentioning is the one that made all gothic stories abominable in the very beginnings of this genre (see p. 9 for the reception of The Castle of Otranto (1764)), and it is the morbid description of certain scenes, disgusting at least, bordering with unacceptable at most. ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is no exception and offers such a scene very readily – it is the description of butchering the body. What is the most disturbing about it is not the actual procedure, but the attitude of the narrator – he takes it calmly, is unaffected, has no remorse, and works methodically. It is his approach, his laughter more than anything else that disgusts the reader and makes him think: How horrible! How Awful! Here are the mentioned lines:

First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. [...] There was nothing to wash out [...] A tub had caught all – ha! ha!(Poe, Tales 270)

4.1.3. Construction of narrative – focalization We will stick with Bal’s opinion that focalization is “a necessary rather that an optional feature of narrative texts”(Jahn, 174). However, this does not mean focalization is something set and unchanging. Indeed, an author chooses a certain way in which to tell a story and as there are many elements that create a story, they must influence each other. Although it may not be focalization he chooses first, it will definitely shape the final story, as it restricts everything from the way we are ‘served’ the information and events, to the subtle nuances of voices of characters or narrators that talk to us. We will now look at focalization and how Poe works with it in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’. ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ seems to be at first sight quite clear cut when we ask the question who is the focalizer or the focal character (see p. 12-13 and 17-18) – it is our narrator referring to himself as “I”, delivering his feelings and thoughts, seeing the events through his own eyes. Using Genette’s typology we can say that internal focalization is used, 27

more precisely, fixed focalization, which “denotes the presentation of events from the point of view of a single focal character”(Jahn 174). We must remember that the category of fixed focalization is always applied on the text globally, not locally (Jahn 173). However, it is not that simple. If we look more closely, we will find short passages that do not fit this pattern. In the story, or narrative, they are inconspicuous enough, because they blend easily, glide naturally from one form to the other. It is very like the gliding in free indirect speech as Barry described in ‘speech and thought representation’ (see p. 15), only in this case we do not follow thoughts of the speaker, but of his victim. We are still aware of who is talking, however, we know as well, that the narrator should not have an access to this kind of information. Let us look at the incriminating paragraph:

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. ... I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself – ‘It is nothing but wind in the chimney – it is only a mouse crossing the floor,’ ... Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions; ... All in vain; because Death, in approaching him, had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel – although he neither saw nor heard – to feel the presence of my head within the room. (Poe, Tales 269)

We can dismiss the idea of this section being any different, saying it is just babbling of a diseased mind that is sure it knows the inner turnings of another person’s mind. However, we cannot ignore the smooth way the narrator moves from his own thoughts to the thoughts of his victim. In the first sentence he sticks to his perception, as in all the paragraphs before. Then the focus of his thoughts moves to the old man. Still the narrator refers to himself as “I”. But then, when he starts to describe the old man’s fear, “I” suddenly disappears and for a few next sentences, we are left with omniscient narrator instead – the one who tells us, what the victim is saying to himself, how he tries to calm himself down, and he tells of the death coming, predicts future. These signs correspond to the concept of zero focalization, “a wholly unrestricted or omniscient point of view”(Jahn 173). However, we can divide this paragraph into even smaller parts. We could separate the thoughts of the old man and the entrance of Death. This way, the sentences from “His 28

fears had been ever since growing upon him ... ” (Poe, Tales 269) to “Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions”(Poe, Tales 269), can be viewed as internally focalized narrative with the victim as the focalizer. This would mean that although focalization is still internal, there are suddenly two focalizers in the story and the whole text uses variable focalization (“presents different story episodes through the eyes of different focal characters”(Jahn 174)), and not fixed focalization as it seemed in the beginning. Then there is the part of Death left. According to how the sentences are written, we can assume that Death in this story actually does something – it creeps closer, envelopes the man. When reading these lines, we see the image of the madman, the original narrator, as Death himself; we see him lurking in the darkness, waiting, ready to bolt. He does not see himself as Death, neither the victim sees him. This part therefore keeps zero focalization (we have a non-intrusive narrator who sees all of this) or we can view it as an example of external focalization, “restricted to behaviourist report and outside views, basically reporting what would be visible to a camera”(Jahn 174), as we see Death = the madman, from the outside. Death does not see, but is seen (this is exactly the difference, as Bal points out, between external focalization and the rest (see p. 21)). But then, the first narrator appears again, pulling us back to reality, pulling us back to his side where he is still standing with his head in the door, and the old man is still lying on the bed, awake, unharmed so far, but already aware of another’s person presence in the room, and the impression of omniscient narrator dissipates. However, if we look at the text this way, if we cut it to such small instances, we can have both internal, and external, and zero focalization in a span of a few sentences, which can be quite confusing in analysis; but the story itself flows smoothly. There is yet another option that makes things less complicated and seems more correct, because it always takes into consideration the context, unlike the examples above. We can call the part of the text presented the madman’s “perception of physical event and ... [his] experience of the psychological implications of the event”(Palmer, 2004, p. 49), not dismiss it as babbling of diseased mind as we did before, and no change of focus or focalization would occur, as all is just the way he views the events – he hears the old man scream, he correctly estimates, what he is saying to himself. All in all, we can say for sure only that this particular part of the story is ambiguous and when we want to determine the focalization used, as the results depend on a) the 29

length of the parts considered, b) the meaning we attribute to them; but in the whole text prevails internal focalization, and if we consider even this part as the perception of the first narrator (the madman), it is as well fixed focalization. Otherwise, if we admit that focalization in that part of the text changes and for the while, the focalizer becomes the victim, the whole text uses internal variable focalization.

4.1.4. Other components of narrative Now that the kind of focalization used was identified, we will have a look at other parts that constitute this narrative, using Barry’s distinction described in chapter 2. If direct speech, as Peter Barry says (223) should be any indication of mimesis “‘showing’ or ‘dramatising’”(223), there is nearly none, as in the whole text are only two instances of direct speech and even these are not a part of one conversation. Should this be insufficient proof, the narrator himself implies this story took place in the past and is not happening before our eyes, when he says: “Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story”(Poe, Tales 267). However, in certain parts, when he uses minute description of his proceedings during the night he killed the man, we have a feeling, that the events are really taking place before our eyes: “I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang in the bed, crying out – ‘Who’s there?’”(Poe, Tales 268) Most of the time though, the events are only ‘related’, to use Barry’s words. The important thing is that everything what we are told are only the events the narrator perceives, at most, he adds some assumptions. Internal focalization used restricts information only to those he can offer. The only exception is the time, when we access thoughts of the victim, however, we concluded that this part is ambiguous and we can, but do not have to, count it as part, where focalizer is changed. Either way, we do not have access to any other information, feelings or thoughts outside those two minds, for example, we do not see what the constables think, when they come to investigate. So far we have talked about the narrator and what he perceives, however, we have not mentioned properly what kind of narrator exactly appears in the story. To find the right category, we will use Genette’s typology introduced in the chapter on construction of narrative, point 2.1.3. Though the name, gender, age, etc. of the narrator in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is never mentioned, he is definitely a distinct character with personal history any by 30

no means is he neutral or objective, which are the criteria Barry used to describe overt, intrusive or dramatised narrator(225-6). Another important thing we know about our narrator is that he participates in the story he tells, therefore he is a homodiegetic narrator. The choice of narrator is closely connected to focalization. While in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, an internally focalized story, the narrator is intrusive, homodiegetic, for narratives using zero focalization is typical non-intrusive narrator as Barry explained (225); when we discussed the ambiguous part of the text in the previous section, where we concluded it might be the case of zero focalization, we also mentioned that the narrator is non-intrusive. As far as time in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is concerned, the main story follows mostly a linear line, the narrator describes how he stalked, then murdered the old man, step by step. The only exception is a brief introduction happening in the present (we know nearly nothing of the narrator is, we can only guess why he wants to tell his story) and a few remarks of the narrator during his telling that draw our attention back to the present (and present state of his mind), but only mildly: “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body”(Poe, Tales 270). Occasionally, the narrator slips some information so we can anticipate what his next steps will be, or how will something turn out: “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him”(Poe, Tales 267). This is what Barry calls a proleptic part of narrative, it ‘flashes forward’ (see 2.1.4. ‘Time in the story’, p. 14). By this time in the story we know, that the narrator is mad and this revelation does not spoil the ending – quite the contrary; the tension increases as we realize what is the narrator capable of. During all those ‘flashes’ and remarks, focalization remained the same. Therefore we can assume, that time in the story itself does not influence focalization in any direct way. The last two categories in Barry’s theory are ‘packaging of the story’ and ‘speech and thought representation’ (see p. 14-15). Apart from brief section when we have access to the victim’s thoughts, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ has only one narrator, therefore, there are no embedded stories. As far as speech and thoughts are concerned, all direct speech (all four instances) are tagged, accompanied by words as shriek, tell, cry out etc. The story is internally focalized, therefore free indirect speech is typical (Barry 230): “I smiled, – for what I had to fear?”(Poe, Tales 271) Also, examples of tagged indirect speech were found, when the narrator uses diegesis for summarising the visit of constables: “The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country”(Poe, Tales 271). 31

Focalization influences the form of tags; in this case the focalizer is the old man’s assistant, so when he tags his direct speech, he uses the first person: “’Villains!’ I shrieked”(Poe, Tales 272) and when he describes what the old man said, the tags are in the third person: “ ... and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out – ‘Who’s there?’”(Poe, Tales 268)

4.2. The Premature Burial

Perhaps the most distinct feature that marks this story as gothic is its main theme – the premature burial. It sets murky tone, suggests of things between the Heaven and the Earth that are better left alone, because not reason nor faith can explain them and religious folk can hardly be reassured by scientific explanations. The reason this story is the subject of our analysis is its structure that offers generous amount of varied material for examining focalization and how it manifests in Poe’s work. The whole story is about fifteen pages long, and offers credible-looking facts, as well as mysterious encounters with unseen beings and voices, hunting the narrator in his sleep. It is a grim story telling of a burden that constant presence of death can pose, and of a slow degradation of happiness, if one surrenders to dark thoughts.

4.2.1. Overview of the plot The story is told by a man suffering uncommon form of disorder called catalepsy. He is clearly obsessed with the thoughts of premature burial, and offers the readers the evidence of cases when people were buried alive, sharing some stories and pieces of information that look like they were taken from (fictional) newspaper articles and medical records. He then relates his own story, describing the fear that engulfed him when he was diagnosed; he talks of precautions he took to minimize the chance of being buried alive, how he made all his family and friends promise they would take care of him when he falls ‘unconscious’ again and do not leave him among strangers. At last he reveals some of his nightmares where he sees the buried coming alive, and finishes with a short record of his travels.

4.2.2. Fantasy and gothic elements The opening line of the story says: “THERE are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purpose of legitimate fiction”(Poe, 32

Tales 322). The whole introduction is written in a philosophical tone, as if the author needed to defend the story, as if he knew it might not be accepted easily – which, in case of true gothic is exactly what often happened in the past, as Roberts explained in his essay (see p. 9). Again, like in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, the appearance of fantastic is quite subtle, if we consider the possibility of coming to life after death more as an oddity, scientifically difficult to explain, rather than the demonstration of supernatural forces. The cases of premature burial mentioned in the story are presented as facts and it is implied that their occurrence accompanies the whole history of humanity. Therefore, this mystery of life and death is a part of the world where the protagonist lives; Mendlesohn calls this kind of fantasy immersive (see p. 8). The story has the feel of fantastic and unbelievable when the author offers the evidence of a burial, where a young couple were separated, the girl married, then she died, her former lover found her grave, woke her and after their reunion they stayed together for the rest of their lives. Not all of the evidence, however, was fairy tale like. One of the cases introduced – the case of Mr Edward Stapleton – was indeed the most terrifying part of the whole story. The man’s body was stolen from his grave and then brought in to a hospital, where doctors made some tests. During the procedure the man awoke and spoke, before falling unconscious again and scaring everybody nearly to death – truly a scene from horror, unnerving, and very unlikely, as if cut out from a book. This part is undoubtedly a good example of “mysterious, and violent incidents”( Merriam Webster’s 480) that are part of gothic fiction. Yet there is even more unsettling part of the story, the part, when the narrator describes the steps he undertook to be able to save himself should he ever be mistakenly declared dead and buried alive, as he gradually became obsessed with death and now suffers horrific nightmares. During the course of his life he grew paranoid, “a prey to perpetual horror”(Poe, Tales 332) as he describes it, and in one time, he even entertains a thought, that his closest friends would misuse his illness, just to get rid of him. He had “the family vault remodelled ... [the coffin] warmly and softly padded”(Poe, Tales 332-3) and a bell made to be attached to the corpse. He describes his arrangements to a considerable detail causing the text look more than just morbid and further persuading the reader of the 33

unhealthy impact the disease has on his mind, and of “desolation, and decay”(Merriam Webster’s 480) that now fill his soul. The crown of the gothic and fantastic in the story, though, is the narrator’s dream or a nightmare, more precisely. He dreamed that he was cataleptic for a long time and a voice came to him:

Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word ‘Arise!’ within my ear. [...] I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by my wrist, had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind; and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay ... and there was a general and sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried.”(Poe, Tales 331-2)

The depressing reality, as can be seen from the passage, is deeply rooted in narrator’s both conscious and subconscious part of mind. His desperation is reflected in his acts, as well as in the choice of vocabulary, e.g. oppressed, annihilation, misery, darkness etc., just to name a few.

4.2.3. Construction of narrative – Focalization We can divide the text of ‘The Premature Burial’ into three parts. At the beginning of the story appears a narrator. He talks about all horrible things, massacres, plagues, etc. that accompanied human history. For the worst of all a man can experience, however, he considers being buried alive. There is no sign of personal history of the narrator, no mention of his feelings (features of nonintrusive narrator, typical for zero focalization). It looks like he simply aims to share some knowledge and thoughts on the matter with his readers, and he even refers to them: “I need not remind the reader ... ”(Poe, Tales 322). After he introduces the topic of premature burial, he proceeds to relate four different cases of burying people alive, drawing information from various sources. Only then he steps into the story as a character, telling of his own experience with catalepsy, and we have finally the access to more, than just “dry” facts and some philosophy. This is the part when we can surely say that mostly internal fixed focalization is used in the story, despite the fact that the beginning looked different. Moreover, it is internal fixed focalization, as there is no other narrator (for 34

full typology of focalization see p. 17-18). The only ambiguous can be the part dealing with the four mentioned cases of burials. While the text is not separated in any way, the part about four burials reads different; it mostly makes use of diegesis (telling) and can be considered a summary, without traces of direct speech or room for thoughts of the characters that are described. In fact, those descriptions of the cases are small stories standing on their own. We know our narrator is relating them. However, he tries to stay objective, provide only pure facts so he can persuade us about seriousness of the discussed topic; occasionally there appears something remotely resembling an assumption: “The Chirurgical Journal of Leipzig, a periodical of high authority and merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate and republish ... ”(Poe, Tales 325). After that, the narrator goes back to describe the case in more detail, without drawing any conclusions or including remarks:

An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature ... being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the head ... he fell into more and more hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he died. The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the public cemeteries ... ”(Poe, Tales 325)

Although the narrator is not a part of these stories, never participated in the events described, sometimes his personality leaks to the surface as in the last sentence mentioned above; the word “indecent” suggests there is a mind feeling reproach to the quality of the burial. Focus of this piece of the story, however, is on the officer who was buried and on events that preceded and followed his “death”. There is no “I” playing a part in the life of the officer, there is just “he”. We do not see what “he” thought but we know, what happened to “he”. It is a clear case of external focalization which is “restricted to behaviourist report and outside views, basically reporting what would be visible to a camera”(Jahn 174); we see only the outside, we see behaviour, but not reasons behind it. Thus the narrative switches between focalizations, but the narrator stays the same, for the reasons we just mentioned – his personality is still tangible in the description of the four cases of burials, and as there is no other person to tell about the burials, to offer their own narrative; we cannot call this part of the text embedded narrative, which is, according to Genette, “a narrative within the narrative”(qtd. in Barry 227). 35

Why then we labelled the whole text as using fixed focalization, when we so readily offer the evidence that not in all the text is used internal focalization of which fixed focalization is a subtype? It is because we take into consideration the whole context, and those four tales of the cases of premature burials are still told by the same person that leaves traces of his personality in them, try as he may to offer just facts, it is still our narrator relating information as he sees it, as he found it written somewhere, or how he heard it. The conclusion as to what focalization prevails depends on our point of view, whether we look at the text as a whole or divide it to several parts sharing certain features. Let us now backtrack a little and return to the word “indecent”. We may, of course, consider this example just a part of description, an affirmation of Poe’s attempts to make his text pleasing to the eye and dismiss it altogether as a sign of narrator’s standpoint in the part of the story that does not entirely belong to him. Given, that his sentences tend to be several lines long, there is no doubt left that Poe was fond of descriptions. However, the second part of this story is actually the story of the narrator, where he becomes subjective, and gradually more and more afraid of being buried alive. If such a person was to give us plain facts, there would have to be a trace of their disdain, of their fear, unhappiness. Poe, by putting the narrator’s opinion here and there in the embedded texts just made the whole story more believable and cohesive at least as far as focalization is concerned. Cohesion is very important for the story to work – all parts must cooperate. The reason we are still dwelling on this matter is that while the four burial stories are easily distinguishable, as was already shown, the rest of the story, introduction and then the second half, uses “I”, but it is not the same. We agreed that focalization is based on restricting information. The same person is relating the story; but in the first part, we know nearly nothing of the person, of the narrator, except he considers the premature burial the most horrific thing. He withdraws from us all information connected to his personality, he looks like a mere telling medium. And then he starts relating the first story of premature burial:

I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well-authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighbouring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely-extended excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable citizen [...] .(Poe, Tales 323) 36

Poe once again fluently “dives” into new story, the first burial story, as we called it. The change is so fluent, so cohesive, that should we stop reading the story in the middle, when the narrator manages to relate all four cases of premature burial, we could come to the wrong conclusion that zero focalisation is used in the narrative as it has nearly an omniscient feel, when we follow various stories of so many people, when we are told so much. However, the burial stories are mostly diegesis, as was already pointed out, and there is no access to the thoughts of characters – except the narrator, who smoothly “wipes out” the lingering feeling when he says: “It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these”(Poe, 1994, p. 328), and then completely leaves it behind, when he starts relating his own story: “For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy”(Poe, Tales 329). Now the difference between the introduction and the second half of the story is clearer. Our aim was to point out how closely various kinds of focalization can be connected and how little difference sometimes seems to be between them. However, no matter how the first part of the story feels, the conclusion is the same – the story is internally focalized, and the focalization is fixed, because even though in the burial stories external focalization is used, the narrator (and focalizer) does not change, he only tells stories of others how he perceives them and for the moment, he does not refer to himself.

So far, in both of the stories was used internal focalization. It is for certain reasons. Internal focalization is restricting in a way that what is related is described only from the point of view of the focalizer and can be mysterious, unclear, or even a lie. This uncertainty of focalizer – he cannot be absolutely sure of what is going on in all cases (for example in dreams) – helps build the tension in the story. One can read through the example of four cases of premature burial calmly. However, when the narrator begins to describe his fears afterwards (all the mysterious things that are happening to him and what sorts of strange things he feels), staying calm proves a much harder task. We always know only what the narrator knows – if he is willing to share.

4.2.4. Construction of narrative – Other components of narrative Let us once again start with mimesis and diegesis. If we stick to Barry’s definition, more than a half story is just diegesis, offering “linking information ... without trying to 37

create the illusion that the events are taking place before our eyes”(223); the narrator just summarizes reasons for his fear and relates the cases of premature burials. The change comes when he finally enters the story and describes one of his nightmares:

Methought I was immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word ‘Arise!’ within my ear. I sat erect. The darkness was total. ... ‘Arise! did I not bid thee arise?’ ‘And who,’ I demanded, ‘art thou?’(Poe, Tales 331)

This is an example of mimesis; the events are related as if happening now, we see the scene and witness the actual dialogue, not something retold, as were the stories of burials. After this part comes diegesis and then once more mimesis, where the events are delivered in such a way we really believe the narrator to be buried alive and that significantly raises the tension. This supports Barry’s claim that the authors switch between the two modes “for strategic reasons”(223). The next element we will discuss is the narrator of the story. We concluded that despite the change of focalization, there is only one narrator. According to Barry, intrusive narrator “is identified as a distinct, named character, with a personal history”(225); the narrator in ‘The Premature Burial’ never mentions his name, however, as he is a part of the story, an actual character, we can assume he has a name, therefore he fits the definition. And as he is a part of the story he tells, he is as well homodiegetic narrator. It is hard to tell whether this story follows linear line, as the narrator is not in the habit of mentioning the time relation of his thoughts and memories. The only dates we know of are those from the four burial stories, and that is not surprising, as the narrator presents them as facts. However, individual events the narrator describes (there is quite lot of them – his dream, his life after the diagnosis etc.) seem to follow chronologically. No proleptic parts were discovered (‘flash forward’ as Barry calls them (226-7)), however, there are some parts that flash backward; the most distinctive of them is the explanation of where and why the narrator is, after he wakes up from his nightmare. For more than one page he lets us believe that he was really buried alive. Then several voices shout for him to stop screaming and he realizes he is in the boat cabin, travelling and he goes back in time to explain what he is 38

doing there: “ … but they restored me to the full possession of my memory. This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia … ”(Poe, Tales 335). Only because the narrative is internally focalized, a reader believes him to be buried, as the narrator himself believes, he is buried alive and tells so, the information is limited. If zero or external focalization was used, it could be much harder to reach the same effect, as the omniscient narrator in zero focalization would know where the character is and that he is dreaming, and in external focalization we would see the character sleeping, but would not have the access to his dream and thoughts, we would probably only see a person screaming form a nightmare, safe and sound in a bed. Let us now only shortly discuss the element of ‘packaging’. While trying to define the kind of focalization used, we needed to decide, whether the part with four burial stories should be considered an embedded narrative. As we concluded that there is no change of narrator, therefore it is not possible for these stories to be embedded narratives; Genette himself defines an embedded story as “a narrative within the narrative”(qtd. in Barry 227), and there is just one narrative – that of the narrator, a man suffering catalepsy. And finally, let us only briefly conclude speech and thought category. Surprisingly, as long as the story is, only two dialogues appear, no longer than four or five replies, most of them are tagged. There is nearly none tagged indirect speech and free indirect speech, as the narrator does not refer to other conversations.

4.3. The Oval Portrait

This is the shortest story we analysed, only about three pages long. It is also the only story that makes use of embedded narrative, therefore is very valuable in our sear for the mutual influence of focalization and other elements of narrative, as the embedded story uses different kind of focalization than the rest of the story.

4.3.1. Overview of the plot Two travellers, a gentleman and his valet (Pedro), hide in abandoned château, after the former was injured. He looks at the old portraits that are in the turret they occupy. He finds a volume, where the portraits ant their history are described. Then he notices an oval portrait that was hidden in shadow before and instantly closes his eyes, not knowing why. It 39

is a portrait of a young woman and after he opens his eyes again, he feels strange looking at it, though it is obviously a masterpiece. He returns back to the volume and looks up the reference to the oval portrait. The book speaks about a young couple, a fair maiden and a painter, about their love and tragedy of their lives. The painter wanted to paint a portrait of his wife that would capture her beauty. The process took days and days, and eventually, the young lady’s health faded without her husband noticing, and she died at the moment he finished his painting.

4.3.2. Fantasy and gothic elements ‘The Oval Portrait’ could be viewed as an example of portal-quest fantasy; Mendlesohn describes it as a kind of fantasy where “the protagonist enters a new world”(2). The two travellers enter the old château and its forgotten life, when the gentleman reads the volume and reveals the horrific true of the oval portrait. However, no new world in the sense completely different world than ours is entered, and we could call the story immersive; that would mean that the two travellers already are a part of a fantastic world, where it is possible for a portrait to take life of a person. Among the gothic elements of the story we count the setting – old, abandoned château, housing mysterious portraits. Even in Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature (1995), the gothic literature is “characterized by the use of medieval settings, a murky atmosphere of horror and gloom, and macabre, mysterious, and violent incidents”(480). If we stick to this description, we can see more signs. The death of the girl in the portrait was violent, as her husband kept her imprisoned with his demands – he wanted her to stay indoors, so he could have painted her portrait, and slowly she grew ill. The turret where the portrait was painted and where the two travellers stay is a dark and murky place. The pages about the oval portrait the master reads sound grim. The most mysterious and disconcerting piece of information that is mentioned is that the woman in the portrait died exactly when it was finished, but we may or may not believe this, as it is just written in the volume, and we cannot be sure of its credibility. However, the gentleman describes his feelings when he looks at the portrait, and we cannot dismiss what he perceives that easily. As soon as he sees the portrait, he closes his eyes. “It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought – to make sure that my vision had not deceived me – to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain 40

gaze”(Poe, Tales 189). What was it that he glimpsed? What could possibly have such an effect on him that he thinks his sight deceived him? He looks at the portrait once again and describes it. One of the main features is darkness, shadow in the background of the painting; the woman portrayed is beautiful. Then he realizes what is so creepy about the picture; he says it was “an absolute lifelikeliness of expression, which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and appalled me”(Poe, Tales 189-190). Only then he reads the passage about the portrait, and his words gain bigger impact, as we realize that not only horrific circumstances accompanied the making of the portrait, but they also somehow leak through the painting, after so many years, and one is able to perceive them. When we look for ‘the monster’ Roberts considers to be a common feature of gothic literature (31), we will find it in the person of the painter. The above mentioned volume describes him as “a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in his reveries”(Poe, Tales 190). Roberts claims these ‘monsters’ “move from unexceptional ‘human’ behaviour to barbaric, violent”(31). The volume offers the evidence that the painter loved his wife, admired her beauty; but in pursuing his desires, he destroyed her, he was so consumed by his work “that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him”(Poe, Tales 190). His crimes are even worse, for in her devotion and love to him, the bride was so obedient, and cooperated, even though it hurt her.

4.3.3. Construction of narrative – Focalization ‘The Oval Portrait’ has two main parts. As the first comes the story of two travellers. One of them – the gentleman – is the focalizer. He explains why they came to the château, describes the place and the feelings it evokes. We have knowledge of his inner world and thoughts – in Genette’s typology, this corresponds to internal focalization. As there are no other characters functioning as focalizers, we can conclude that in this part of the story fixed focalization is used (for all subtypes of internal focalization see p. 17). Unlike in the two previous stories, no ambiguities were found in this part, however, parts of a narratorial description were localized: “The frame was oval, richly gilded and filigreed in Moresque. As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself”(Poe, Tales 189). According to Palmer (2004), this could be seen not just as a narratorial description but when looked at in context, it can be also the case of “the character’s perception ... the character’s 41

experience of the psychological implications of the event”(49). The gentleman expresses his opinion in the second sentence, and by his choice of words we can assume, that he is deeply moved by the beauty of this creation – he perceives, plus, seeing the painting influences him psychologically, though he does not state it directly, only implies. The second part is an excerpt from the volume the gentleman is reading. Although it tells a story of the two lovers, neither of them is the focalizer, nevertheless, there is a record of their shared lives, but no mention of the author. Because of this, we can exclude internal focalization as our possible option. The passage contains enough descriptive passages and the description of events that we could assume the external focalization was used. This corresponds to Jahn’s view of external focalization; according to him it is “restricted to behaviourist report and outside views, basically reporting what would be visible to a camera”(174). However, in the descriptions, among the characters’ traits, are included also their feelings and attitudes:

He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art: she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; ... loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.(Poe, Tales 190)

Jahn says that in zero focalization “events are narrated from a wholly unrestricted or omniscient point of view”(173); in this passage, we are told of the woman’s hatred and the painter’s passion for his work – nothing like this could be detected by an ordinary camera. Therefore, this part of the text certainly uses zero focalization. Perhaps the only not so logical thing about this result is that this specific part of the story is presented as a text written by somebody and no living person can actually see into the mind of other people, neither it is probable that he or she would witness all that happened and is described in this passage. This is a reason, why, at the beginning, we considered even external focalization as a possibility (somebody could have witnessed all of what happened, even if it is unlikely).

4.3.4. Construction of narrative – Other components of narrative Let us now go through the remaining elements of narrative, and discuss how they were featured in ‘The Oval Portrait’; we will, once again, use Peter Barry’s theory that was consulted on pages 12-16. 42

This time, we will tend to the matter of ‘packaging’ as the first. As we already mentioned, this is the only story from the three where we found an embedded story. The reason we consider ‘The Oval Portrait’ an embedded narrative is that it actually contains “a narrative within the narrative”(qtd. in Barry 227) as Genette describes them. In ‘The Oval Portrait’, we have two different narratives – one of the gentleman and the other by an unknown writer. The gentlemen’s part is called primary narrative, the other secondary narrative; the term ‘primary’ does not signify the level of importance of the narrative, merely says it comes as first. As Barry explains, “[t]he secondary narrative is usually the main story”(227). This story only confirms his claim. While the gentleman’s description of the portrait and of its strange influence over his person raises our curiosity, the story of the portrait is what we are really looking for, and it is offered by the volume. We can specify this category even further. As the primary narrative starts the story, but it is ended by the secondary narrative, ‘The Oval Portrait’ is an example of ‘single-ended’ frame narrative (for full typology see 2.1.3. ‘Telling the story’ p. 13-14). The two narratives in ‘The Oval Portrait’ are very different, therefore, in the following categories, we will treat each of them separately. Indeed, distinct is even the written form of the two – the embedded (secondary) narrative is written in smaller letters than the primary, and is introduced in inverted commas. Now let us look at mimesis and diegesis in the story. The primary narrative is mostly diegetic, as the description of the place and of what was found prevails. Mimesis appears shortly before the gentleman beholds the portrait: “Long, long I read ... The position of candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty ... I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book”(Poe, Tales 188). While the first sentence is still a part of diegesis, with the following one starts mimetic part. After a while follows diegesis again as the gentleman describes the portrait, then Poe switches to mimesis again, when the gentleman reaches for the volume to read. This supports Barry’s claim that “writers use the two modes in tandem”(223). Secondary narrative is all diegesis, except for the second part of the last sentence (after the word ‘wrought’):

And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, “This is indeed Life itself!” turned suddenly to regard his beloved: – She was dead!’(Poe, Tales 191) 43

The direct speech, as Barry says, is a typical sign of mimesis (223) and this was actually the only example of direct speech in the whole story, not just this part. Now let us shortly compare the two parts in respect to focalization. As we already said, focalization in both parts is different. However, we did not observe that this fact significantly influenced mimesis and diegesis in the story. In both parts, both were used, although diegesis more than mimesis. Perhaps the only difference is that the primary narrative offered more opportunities for switching between the two modes, as there was an active character, and the secondary only told story of people long gone (the story was designed to look as a story in a book, and less diegetic it was, the more real the first narrative appeared). Time in this story – in both parts – follows simple linear line. There are no references to past or future. We know nearly nothing of the gentleman, (except that he is wounded, and stays the night in the château with his valet) as he focuses only on what he sees there, and does not describe any of his memories etc. The passage from the volume starts at the beginning, when the two lovers fall in love, and ends at the ending, when one of them dies. No backtracking, no digressions. There is only one hint that can reveal something of the horrible ending: “And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter”(Poe, Tales 190). Once again, despite the fact that in the two parts different kinds of focalization were used, there is no evidence that this could somehow influence time in the story. Only if we look at them as a part that resembles real life and a part that resembles fiction (or the past), we can admit that in real life or real-life-like story (when events are happening now, and the story is not retelling of a past event) no prolepsis is possible, unless one of the characters is able to predict future, whereas in fiction or the past events we know the ending (as in the secondary narrative). However, this has to do more with the meaning of the text rather than its structure, and our primary focus is the structure. Now we will discuss the ever mysterious nameless characters which happen to be the most frequent choice of narrators in Poe’s stories – at least those three subject to our analysis. According to Barry’s typology, our gentleman would be homodiegetic intrusive narrator, as he certainly does have a personal history (even though he never reflects on his past), his personality emerges, and he participates in the events. As far as the secondary narrative is concerned, there appears heterodiegetic non-intrusive narrator, who does not participate in the events described, nor can be “identified as a distinct, named character, with a personal history, gender [he is] just a voice or a tone, … a mere ‘telling medium’ which 44

strives for neutrality and transparency”(Barry 225) This time focalization has some influence over the choice of narrator (or the other way around). Given the nature of typology (see 2.1.3. ‘Telling the story’ p. 13-14) it would be impossible to have omniscient narrator in the internally focalized text. It is therefore reasonable that with the change of focalization in ‘The Oval Portrait’ the narrators change as well. Because of this we claim that focalization is the most closely connected to the choice of a narrator; the mutual influence of these two categories is much stronger than influence of focalization and any other element of narrative. As the last, we will treat the category of speech and thought. ‘The Oval Portrait’ is significantly shorter than the previous stories, therefore, even though the first part is internally focalized, there is not so many examples of free indirect speech, as the majority of the text consist of the description of the place and the portrait without the narrator brooding over them too much. The time when he spends some short moments to consideration is the time he first looks at the portrait and instantly closes his eyes: “Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. ... It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought ... ”(Poe, Tales 189). We found one example of tagged indirect speech: “I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room ... ”(Poe, Tales 188), which happens to be the only piece of the text mentioning the valet’s name. The only example of direct speech was found in the second part, in the volume the gentleman read; it was an exclamation of the painter. It is direct and tagged speech: “ ... and crying with a loud voice, ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ [he] turned suddenly to regard his beloved ... ”(Poe, Tales 191). In this part zero focalization is used, therefore tagged sentences use the third person reference. Similarly, internally focalized narrative uses the third person reference, when the focalizer tags utterances other than his (her) own.

45

Conclusion

The aim of this thesis was to find the types of focalization Poe was inclined to use in his gothic stories, find out whether his use of them was consistent, and verify, whether (and to what degree) focalization is connected to other elements of narrative. Our analysis revealed that internal focalization prevails in Poe’s stories, however, other kinds of focalization were incorporated as well, rather inventively, but not inconsistently. Unfortunately, the extent of the whole work could not, by far, do the topic of focalization justice, as it is not entirely suitable for bachelor thesis; although American literature is a part of the curriculum, and certain time is devoted to analysis of literary texts, the concept of focalization is not included, therefore this work should be looked at as a means of broadening a student’s knowledge, and deepening the understanding of the workings of narrative. It is the attempt to give overall view of the concept of focalization and show its place among other elements that create narrative. Let us now summarize all the works, essays, analyses, theories, and typologies that were used in our analysis, and discuss their validity and usefulness and the problems that arose during the analysis. First, we looked at gothic fiction as a branch of fantasy literature; we discussed the historical development of the genre, as well as the main representatives and their most influential works. In the analysis, Mendlesohn’s typology of fantasy (James and Mendlesohn, 2012, 2) was used to determine how the fantastic steps into the story. This was only of minor importance in comparison to our main goals, and her theory was introduced only briefly; therefore, some of the results were inconclusive, as more than just one of the four categories (the portal-quest, immersive, intrusion, and luminal) fitted to the story, depending on what exactly we understood under the term ‘the fantastic’. For example, in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, the peculiar mental disease of the main character could be considered as a feature of a fantastic world, where it is possible that such diseases, which make our senses superior, exist. In that case, the story would fall under the category immersive. On the other hand, nothing in the story, except the disease itself, suggest, that it is a world other than ours; therefore it could be said that with disease comes the fantastic, and that is the case of the intrusion. It is not our intention to imply that Mendlesohn’s typology is not correct, but despite its clear and logical structure, trying to fit every piece of fantasy literature in these four categories can be somewhat troublesome. 46

Another work that was of much help in the analysis is ‘Gothic and horror fiction’ (2012), an essay by Adam Roberts. He looked at reasons this genre was named ‘gothic’ (in the sense ‘barbaric’), and why people at first did not accept this literature. We searched for features of gothic that could be repulsive even for 19th century society, the time of Edgar Allan Poe. In his short stories, we found characters obsessed with death, or with morbid interests, and mentally unstable, just to name a few. However, Roberts says that gothic is ludicrous, despite all the horrors (28). Indeed, behaviour of the main character of ‘The Tell- Tale Heart’ only supports his claims; the story is murky and the character commits horrific deeds, however, the reason for the crimes is laughable – he is obsessed with the eye of his master and kills him just because of that. Roberts also observed, there is a common feature for gothic stories – the ‘monsters’ in them are able to transform from “‘human’ behaviour to barbaric”(31). After our research we concluded that this is a valid point, as in every story we analysed were found these monsters – the murderer in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, who, during the day, was always nice to his victim, the painter in ‘The Oval Portrait’ that loved his wife and his love killed her, and the last, the illness – catalepsy, in ‘The Premature Burial’ that lulled the sufferer into unconsciousness where he could hide from his thoughts of death, only to leave him awake and in fear he was buried alive and thus systematically ruined his life. All in all, Roberts’s work offers a deep, well organised and varied insight into gothic fiction, providing us with guidelines for the part of the analysis where we focused on gothic features of Poe’s short stories. The last thing worth mentioning connected to gothic is the research carried by Martin Procházka. In his contribution to Lectures on American Literature (2002) he discussed the features and main representatives of American gothic fiction. His observations on Poe’s works helped us a great deal as they directed our attention to the main aspects of Poe’s gothic that are considered new, American, as was for example the shift from “haunted castles and horrid dungeons to the dark recesses of the human mind”(Procházka 67). This definition was one of the most important criteria for selecting the stories we would analyse. Second, we had a look at ‘construction of narrative’. The cornerstone for this part of the thesis became the work of Peter Barry, more precisely his interpretation of Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse (1972). Barry, in his book Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (2009) offers the basics from the theory of literature, including the chapter on narratology, where he describes six main areas that can be found in 47

Genette’s work and that constitute the construction of narrative as we understand it: focalization, narrative mode, telling the story (about narrators), time in the story, ‘packaging’ (about embedded narratives), and speech and thought representation (222-231). The book introduced us to the issue of focalization and was a great help in searching for the place of focalization in narrative. It helped us to find connections between focalization and the other five elements of narrative mentioned above. Some of the elements, however, were more easily identifiable than others. While there were no problems with identifying a narrator following Barry’s description of the sorts of narrators that can appear in a story, time, embedding and narrative mode were more complicated, though the nature of Poe’s stories can be accounted for this more than the possibility of flawed theory. Indeed, nearly any part of Poe’s short stories can be looked at from several points of view – such is the nature of analyzing; this counts even more, when a story is so rich with descriptions, and so smoothly flowing, as are those by Poe. However, the most troublesome of all proved to be focalization. Therefore, we needed to search for more sources dealing with this matter in more detail; but otherwise, we can only recommend Barry’s book to anyone interested in the well-organised, brief, but enriching theory of literature. Third comes the part dealing with focalization only, presenting theories of Gérard Genette, Alan Palmer, and Mieke Bal. In the analysis was used Genette’s typology of focalization. In theory, it looks like a neatly divided terminology, logically ordered, with three main types (internal, external, and zero focalization) and three subtypes of internal focalization (fixed, variable, multiple) (Jahn 173). It is broader than what Barry introduced, however, the more elaborate categorisation did not help to make the results clearer. Focalization can be thought of as a quite touchy subject. Not just because many theorists’ opinions literally oppose the others, but because the way an author works with text is so hard to describe, and as was already said, things can be interpreted in many ways. Genette’s typology was sufficient for defining focalization in the whole text, or shorter parts that were clearly distinguished from the rest of the story (e.g. the description from the book in ‘The Oval Portrait’). We discovered that for the most part Poe used internal focalization, usually with the first person narrative. There were some parts of stories, however, that were contrary to this conclusion, or were, at least, ambiguous; a lot depends on the length of the parts of the text are taken into consideration. Should the text be divided into as small parts as sentences, we would get many various results (as is shown in the analysis of ‘The Tell-Tale 48

Heart’), even for one sentence, because some utterances are difficult to judge without context. In longer parts – paragraphs, or the whole stories – we have some context to work with, however, then the parts that do not fit are more likely to occur. What is more, the subtypes of focalization Genette mentions can be used only globally, whereas the main types can be applied globally as well as locally (Jahn 173-4). All in all, Genette’s concept of focalization is sufficient for us to understand the differences in perception, and how the choice of focalization can influence the whole text. Internally focalized narratives that we found in Poe’s work are good for building the tension, because we see, hear etc. only what the focalizer perceives. On the other hand, the stories are limited in the way that the narrator cannot tell us straight away something he does not witness for himself. This is the reason, why Poe included in ‘The Oval Portrait’ as a source of not accessible information a book the narrator (or our focal character) reads; this part uses zero focalization. Although Genette’s work is very influential and became the basis for many other theorists (e.g. Barry and Palmer both work with Genette’s concept), Mieke Bal claims it is built upon a criterion that is not directly connected to focalization – the amount of knowledge of the narrator; she says that in externally focalized texts, the character is seen, instead of being the one that sees as is the case in internal and zero focalization (2006, 136). This, however, did not influence our analysis much, as we did not inspect Bal’s concept further; but it helped us to view focalization in broader context, and after analysing the three texts, we can only agree with Bal’s statement that Genette’s “definition needs more precision”(136), as it did not help us to identify the type of used focalization in every case, and certain number of ambiguities surfaced. The last theory we discussed was by Alan Palmer (Fictional Minds, 2004), who shows how the concept of focalization can be incorporated into other theories, in this case the concept of ‘fictional minds’. Palmer’s treatment of focalization helped us with deeper understanding of how focalization influences the text and his examples helped in the process of the analysis, as we had better idea where ambiguities could occur and how to treat them. For example, in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, we realized that the part where we have access to the victim’s mind can be viewed as narratorial description and not necessarily as the change of focalization. Palmer also emphasises the importance of seeing focalization in context, therefore, in the analysis, we always distinguish whether we look at the instance of the text 49

separately or in the context of the whole story. He deals with the topic practically, introducing many examples, and pointing out inconsistencies in the concept of focalization. To summarize it all, our research confirmed that Edgar Allan Poe used in his gothic stories several kinds of focalization, and mixed them in a way that can be called experimental, but still artistic and not disruptive, as the transitions are very subtle or clear enough to be called intentional. Therefore we call his use of focalization inventive but not inconsistent. The prevailing type of focalization used is internal focalization that helps to keep the tension in the narrative. However, we cannot generalize this result, as we analysed only three of many Poe’s gothic stories. Moreover, the thesis shows that the concept of focalization is very heterogeneous, and different theories could view the text differently. For our analysis, we used Gérard Genette’s concept of focalization and we applied his typology. To show the place of focalization in the construction of narrative, Peter Barry’s interpretation of Genette’s work was used; its clearly organized structure helped us to reveal that focalization is connected to the most of other elements of narrative and there is at least certain degree of mutual influence between them.

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