In classical narratology, the phenomenon of focalization has often been treated as sui generis to narrative or even literary narrative, yet it is in fact just one special case of a much larger and far more basic picture of the mind in action, with its representational, semantic and epistemic com- ponents. Corresponding wider and more basic frameworks are available in several disciplines, and each of them could actually serve as basis for a reconceptualization of focalization theory. Let me now enumerate several such frameworks in order of increasing abstraction:
– Within narratology, focalization is one component of a general theory of fictional minds, that is, of the literary representation of mental activity in all its varieties.
– In terms of fictional worlds semantics, each take is part of an agent’s particular epistemic perspective on the story world. Modally seen, one posits, following Marie-Laure Ryan (1991) a textual actual world con- sisting precisely of all the facts of this world. Now each agent in it, sub-
ject to his information access possibilities and inherent processing capa- bilities, forms in his mind a take on one or more items of this world, each such take forming an element of his epistemic map of this world or his personal belief world relative to the textual actual one. In text-world se- mantics, one can speak of each take as component of the textual subworld set up by the focalizer’s mental activity.
– For cognitive linguistics, each take on a given situation constitutes one of several possible construals or conceptualizations of this situation, one of several alternative conceptual structures the mind can impose on the same external phenomenon. The specific lexical and grammatical choices made by the author in portraying a given take are viewed as indi- cators of the perceptual−cum−cognitive operations (process) which gave rise to this (fictional) take, as well as to its specific structure (product). The basic kinds of objects that can be involved in such construal op- erations are scenes and events, entities and processes, motion and loca- tion, and force and causation (cf. Talmy 2006: 542). The basic structures or schemas employed in organizing these objects include the config- urational (objects in space and time and their relations), perspectival (location or path of the point at which one places one’s “mental eye” to regard a scene), attentional (patterns in which different data are fore-and backgrounded), and force dynamics (relations between entities such as opposition, overcoming, helping and hindering, causing and preventing) (543–44).
Cruse (cf. 2004: 46–73) provides a detailed discussion of the basic construal operations occurring in the mental structuring of data. These in- clude: (1) attention, which encompasses selection, focus, scope and de- gree of detail and its summary or sequential scanning; (2) comparison, or- ganizing the incoming data into fore- and background elements; (3) per- spective or situatedness, defining the vantage point and orientation of the observation, as well as the location and path of attention; (4) the con- stitution from data of spatio-temporal objects and their interrelations, that is, providing a structure for the experience; and finally, (5) the con- ceptualization of processes and events as involving different kinds of forces acting in different ways upon the participants of the events.
– For cognitive psychology, focalization as defined in this article could be fully subsumed under perception in the wider sense. Thus, James Pomerantz in his entry on perception (2003) defines perception as the complex sequence of processes by which we take the information re- ceived from our senses and then organize and interpret it, which in turn
allows us to see and hear the world around us as meaningful, recognizable objects and events, with clear boundaries in space and time. We are also given some basic facts about perception: it is limited, selective, influenced by context and not entirely veridical (=corresponding to facts), and it requires time, memory, and internal representation.
– In terms of Husserl’s phenomenology one distinguishes the object of attention or intentional object, the ego that has this object in mind, the acts of consciousness applied to it, and the resultant noema or intentional content.
– In cognitive science, one speaks of objects of attention, mind, cog- nitive processing and the resultant mental representation.
– (Finally) in terms of information theory, one speaks of information or data input, an information processor, a series of internal operations based on computation in the wider sense and the resultant information or data output.
The adoption of any such theoretical framework would entail at least the translation of the terms of focalization theory into those of the higher, more powerful theory, and a corresponding reformulation of focalization theory claims in terms of the framework selected. If this operation is suc- cessful, focalization theory becomes a sub-theory of the higher one, but quite possibly containing some claims specific to the literary domain, so it cannot be derived from the higher one or reduced to it, and we still get to keep our jobs. Let us further note that if this subsumption under a higher theory succeeds, then many of its insights may also apply to the literary domain, giving us extra knowledge for free, and also suggesting many perspectives and issues that could not occur to us within the narratological context in isolation. The prospects of any such interdisciplinary re- conceptualization are daunting indeed, but I am going to evade this task by invoking the scholar’s most trite excuse: ars longa, vita brevis. In- stead, I propose to go back into more specifically narratological issues concerning the revision of current distinctions.
“Focalization” in the narrow sense is an act or activity. One can thus ask about its object (what is the object of this act); agent (who focalizes); and product (or how, that is, kinds of focalization). One can also enquire about combined phenomena, such as the intersection of who and how or agent and manner, which underlies all typologies of focalization. Before we get down to details let us remember that our goal is not to produce some epistemic or psychological general truths or systematics, but rather to provide fruitful heuristic tools for the description of artistic products
containing a significant mental component in their content level. And let us further recall that fictional worlds do not necessarily correspond to the
actual one that science studies, and need not obey its rules or categories.