Modes Of Focalization And Their Stylistic Effects In Hemingway's Fiction

Fiction is an art of story telling and its narrative techniques have a direct impact on its artistic charm. Narrative point of view, as a commonly-used technique of story telling, plays an important part in narration. Since Henry James and Gustave Flaubert first manipulated it to achieve various rhetorical distances, more attention has been paid to this narrative technique. With the development of narratology and stylistics in the 1960s, point of view has become an intersecting area of these two fields. However, they have different research emphases. In the field of narratology, point of view or focalization in Genette's term functions as an adjustment to the narrated information and rhetorical distances; while from a stylistic viewpoint, it is embodied by the stances and tones implied by the wording. The current study, combining both perspectives, carries out a narratological stylistic analysis of the modes of focalization in Hemingway's two novels and three stories so as to find out the differences in the modes of focalization between his novels and short stories. In doing so, we can have a better understanding of Hemingway's unique narrative craft; meanwhile we can upgrade our level of appreciating stylistic effects and artistic charm of fiction.This thesis begins with an account of fiction interpretation from narratological and stylistic approaches, focusing on the various conventional definitions and classifications of point of view, modes of speech presentation, and their role in fiction interpretation. Then it goes on with the examination of the nature and literary function of each mode of focalization and shift and transgression of modes of focalization, and points out that there is a close link between modes of focalization and their stylistic effects. Based on this theoretical framework, this thesis proceeds with a narratological stylistic analysis and a comparison of the modes of focalization in Hemingway's two novels and three short stories from such aspects as mode of focalization, shift or transgression of mode of focalization and speech presentation. Differences in the modes of focalization between his novels and stories are summarized, which will help to upgrade our level of fiction interpretation.