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subject of focalization. 62 In the following chapters, the focalizer will also be referred to as the “poetnarrator”,
63 an entity who first acts as an agent of perception in the world of the poem and then conveys
these perceptions, perceptions affected by the poet-narrator's senses and psychological state, to the
reader. The term “poet-narrator” has been chosen because the perceiving agent of the poems, or the
agent who “sees” 64 the poetic world, is also the agent who “speaks” or narrates information of the story
world to the reader. Since there will be no instances in the poems under analysis in which the identity
of the narrative agent is separate from the focalizer, a poem's focalizer and speaker will be considered
to be one and the same.
Within the focalization equation, the focalizer presents elements of the story world: these
elements are the focalized, “the object of focalization [or the] existents...presented in terms of the
focalizer's perspective”. 65 In the modified language used in this thesis, the focalizer is the poet-narrator
whose perceptual apparatus (such as eyes, ears and olfactory system) orients the presentation of the
poetic world, whereas the focalized is that which is presented. 66 For example, in the opening two lines
of Cen Shen's “Passing Fire Mountain” 经 火 山 :
火 山 今 始 见
突 兀 蒲 昌 东
Fire Mountain, today seen for the first time
Towers to the east of Puchang
the poet-narrator is the agent who “sees” (jian 见 ) and then conveys what is seen while the focalized is
145; Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology, p. 31. As will be explained shortly, these two manners often overlap
one another in a poem so that the perceptual aspect of the focalized (the images of the poem or the poem's existents) can
be read as having been heavily influenced by the psychology of the focalizer. These concepts demonstrate how the
vision of a poem “is not free: what is seen grows out of a complex and ongoing interplay between the physical world
[that which is perceived through the perceptual facet of focalization]...and the interior state of the poet [the
psychological facet of focalization]”. See Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics (Madison: University
of Madison Press, 1985), p. 64.
62 Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology, p. 32.
63 “Poet” is included in the compound since it “is a feature of lyric [poetry] that the point of view of the poet and the point
of view of the speaker of the poem are meant to be the same”. Were this thesis tackling narrative poetry, which unlike
lyric poetry contains “multiple points of view...separated in time and space from the narrator [and] poet”, the term “poetnarrator”
would require modification. See Dore J. Levy, Chinese Narrative Poetry: The Late Han through T'ang
Dynasties (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), p. 58.
64 “See” is used here in the sense of perceiving through all available channels of apprehension.
65 Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology, p. 32.
66 Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 74.