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Mikkonen, Kai. "Graphic Narratives as a Challenge to Transmedial Narratology: The Question of Focalization." Amerikastudien 56. (2011): 637–52. Added by: joachim (10/28/12, 1:56 PM) |
Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed BibTeX citation key: Mikkonen2011a Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: Intermediality, Narratology Creators: Mikkonen Collection: Amerikastudien |
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Attachments | URLs http://www.jstor.org/stable/23509433, http://www.academi ... Graphic_Narratives |
Abstract |
This essay discusses three premises of focalization theory and narrative perspective that bear particular relevance to the question of narrative mediation in visual storytelling, specifically in regard to graphic narratives. These questions include the fundamental distinctions between ‘who speaks’ and ‘who sees,’ between the source and the degree of focalization and the entity focalized, and between personal and impersonal vantage points. Inspired by recent developments in focalization theory and transmedial narratology, the essay emphasizes the importance of medium-specific features in graphic storytelling and perspective-taking and ponders the narratological problems that these features create. Designating the degree of deixis in graphic images on the visual level is exceedingly difficult; moreover, many types of focalization in graphic narratives do not fall as easily within the external/internal divide as in literary narratives. In order to develop a truly transmedial concept of focalization, it is important for narrative theory not only to find common ground between different narrative media in respect to their techniques and processes of perspective-taking, but also to develop ways to explain the fundamental differences between verbal and visual focalization or among different varieties of pictorial narration. Graphic narratives present a specific challenge to transmedial narratology, as the medium requires that the reader integrate perceptual information from different semiotic channels in ways that are both similar to, and different from, other forms of multimodal narration.
Added by: joachim Last edited by: joachim |