Thor Grünbaum

I argue that we can clarify an important form of focalization or narrative perspective by the structure of perspective in sensory imagination. Understanding focalization in this way enables us to see why one particular form of focalization has to do with the representation of perceptual perspective in the narrative world, and to explain why there is a strict functional distinction between voice and perceptual focalization, why all forms of perceptual focalization are internal to the world of the narrated events, and why this does not prevent the narrator from “seeing” what is happening in the narrated world. Explaining perceptual focalization as a material counterpart of the perspective in sensory imagination enables us to see the role played by the narrative representation of perspective in the reader's understanding of in the narrative as well as the reader's emotional response to the narrative.

In this article, I argue that the representation of simple, bodily action has the function of endowing the narrative sequence with a visualizing power. It makes the narrated scenes or situations ready for visualization by the reader or listener. By virtue of this visualizing power or disposition, these narrated actions disrupt the theoretical divisions, on the one hand, between the narrated story and the narrating discourse, and on the other hand, between plot-narratology and discourse-narratology. As narrated actions, they seem to belong to the domain of plot-narratology, but insofar as they serve an important visualizing function, these narrated actions have a communicative function and, as such, they can be said to belong to the domain of discourse-narratology. In the first part of the article, I argue that a certain type of plot-narratology, due to its retrospective epistemology and abstract definition of action, is unable to conceive of this visualizing function. In the second part, I argue that discourse-narratology fares no better since the visualizing function is independent of voice and focalization. In the final part, I sketch a possible account of the visualizing function of simple actions in narratives.