The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge Introductions to Literature) by Abbott H. Porter

Author:Abbott, H. Porter [Abbott, H. Porter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

This passage from The Ambassadors (1903) is pretty typical Henry James. The way his language here tries to seek out and express the inexpressible underscores another trade-off between the media. The absence of vivid empirical immediacy of sight and sound in the novel is made up for by the flexibility it gains in relying on the fluid representational capacities of our imagination.

* * *

How cold an eye?

The coldness of the camera eye has often been taken to mean that there is nothing in the mechanics of film focalization that would suggest a consciousness like that of a narrator. Yet Edward Branigan has maintained that in every film there is always “an underlying level of omniscient narration – that which frames but is not itself framed – and voyeuristic reception – that which looks but is not itself seen – which together create the fictional appearance of other levels of narration.”12 What do you think?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.