Nadia Boudidah

Narrative Focalization in Carolyn Chute's the Beans of Egypt, Maine: a Case Study Nadia Boudidah

The major concern of this work is to examine and explore Gérard Genette's notion of narrative focalization and its application to Carolyn Chute's novel The beans of Egypt, Maine. Focalization, a key concept in Structuralism, helps clarify the difference between "voice" (who speaks?) and "vision" (who sees?), between narration and perspective. Narrative focalization is also crucial in the analysis and perception of subjectivity and ideology in narrative fiction , mainly the perceptual, the psychological, and the ideological formulations of the narrative discourse. The book is devoted to show the working of narrative focalization in the text. Many findingd are reached: The narrative strategy of the novel is unconventional, unstructured, does not maintain a sense of unity or movement or closure, it has narrative disruptions and "inconsistencies", etc. Yet, the examination of the mechanics of narrative does no necessarily mean to preclude the possibility of interpretation and contextualization.