Focalization in Great Expectations and Little Red Cap

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This essay will provide an insight into the meaning of 'focalization' and its description. I will then go on to explore how it is demonstrated in both Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' and The Grimm Brothers 'Little Red Cap'. I will analyse both texts comprehensively, confirming the type of focalization in each text. Also explained is the significance of focalization, and how it aids the reader in terms of the interpretation of text. The two types of focalization to be examined are internal and zero focalization, although a text extract will be provided which will give information on all three types; internal, external and zero focalization. Once the two texts have been analysed, I will compare the different types of focalization used in each text and discuss the contrasting effects each one has on the readers' interpretation. The term 'focalization' was coined by French literary theorist Gerard Genette in 1972. It was introduced as a replacement for 'perspective' or 'point of view'.[1] Genette developed three different types of focalization, and he explains them in his book 'A Narrative Discourse – An Essay in Method': “The first term [zero focalization] corresponds to what English-language criticism calls narrative with omniscient narrator [...] (where the narrator knows more than the character, or more exactly, says more than any of the characters knows). In the second term [internal focalization], Narrator = Character (the narrator says only what a given character knows); this is narrative with 'point of view' […], In the third term [external focalization], Narrator < Character (the narrator says less than the character knows); this is the 'objective' or 'behaviorist' narrative [...]”[2] Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' contains internal focalization throughout – focalizer being young Pip, through whose eyes we see and evaluate events. It
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