THROUGH SOMEBODY ELSES EYES: SENSUAL FOCALIZATION AND LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF VISUAL EXPERIENCES

This article redefines focalization on the basis of new uses of this concept in the field of psychonarratology and cognitive theory of perspective. The authoress treats sensual focalization as a figure of the subject's sense experience which reconstructs the totality of the world represented in a literary work of art and as a figure of the reader experience. Defined in this way, sensual focalization (visual, aural, tactile, etc.) breaks through the conventional divisions erected by the distinction between auctorial and personal narration, or by various traditional uses of this concept. Moreover, sensual focalization is one of the means of engaging the reader in the process of reading in so far as it evokes in him a range of sensual impressions and emotions, which, jointly, form a set of intersubjective bodily experiences.