Sensory imagination and narrative perspective: Explaining perceptual focalization
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Thor Grünbaum
Thor Grünbaum (b. 1975) is an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen 〈tgr@hum.ku.dk〉. His research interests include philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, aesthetics, and narrative theory. His publications include “Trying and the arguments from total failure” (2008); “The body in action” (2008); “Anscombe and practical knowledge of what is happening” (2009); and “Perception and non-inferential knowledge of action” (2011).
Abstract
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.
About the author
Thor Grünbaum (b. 1975) is an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen 〈tgr@hum.ku.dk〉. His research interests include philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, aesthetics, and narrative theory. His publications include “Trying and the arguments from total failure” (2008); “The body in action” (2008); “Anscombe and practical knowledge of what is happening” (2009); and “Perception and non-inferential knowledge of action” (2011).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Approaching the abstract: Building blocks for an epistemology of abstract objects
- The ideal as real and as purely intentional: Ingarden-based reflections
- Making sense together: A dynamical account of linguistic meaning-making
- An example of the “synthetic a priori”: On how it helps us to widen our philosophical horizons
- The generality of signs: The actual relevance of anti-psychologism
- Sensory imagination and narrative perspective: Explaining perceptual focalization
- The basic distinctions in Der Streit
- The Wolf: Ingarden to the narratological rescue. A few remarks on a messy situation within the theory of fiction
- Roman Ingarden's theory of reader experience: A critical assessment
- Varieties of intentional objects
- More than an attitude: Roman Ingarden's aesthetics
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Approaching the abstract: Building blocks for an epistemology of abstract objects
- The ideal as real and as purely intentional: Ingarden-based reflections
- Making sense together: A dynamical account of linguistic meaning-making
- An example of the “synthetic a priori”: On how it helps us to widen our philosophical horizons
- The generality of signs: The actual relevance of anti-psychologism
- Sensory imagination and narrative perspective: Explaining perceptual focalization
- The basic distinctions in Der Streit
- The Wolf: Ingarden to the narratological rescue. A few remarks on a messy situation within the theory of fiction
- Roman Ingarden's theory of reader experience: A critical assessment
- Varieties of intentional objects
- More than an attitude: Roman Ingarden's aesthetics
