SILKE HORSTKOTTE

(Leipzig)

Seeing or Speaking: Visual Narratology and Focalization, Literature to Film

1. Film, Narrative, Focalization Ever since Seymour Chatman proposed to analyze film with the help of narratological concepts (Chatman 1978),1 narratology has become a widespread method of film analysis (see, e. g., Andringa et al. 2001; Bordwell 1985; Branigan 1984; Chatman 1990; Lothe 2000; Nadel 2005). Chatmans main contribution to the field of film narratology remains his concept of the cinematic narrator, which he defined as a non-human agent, the composite of a large and complex variety of communicating devices (Chatman 1990: 134). These include auditory (sound, voice, music) as well as visual channels, for instance lighting, mise-en-scne, camera distance, angle and movement, and editing (rhythm, cut etc). Chatman thereby contradicted David Bordwells earlier contention that film has narration but no narrator, and that notions of film narration are the construction of a spectator, not a narrator (Bordwell 1985). Referring to the opposition between fabula (story) and syuzhet (discourse) in Russian Formalism, Bordwell had defined film narration as the process whereby the films syuzhet and style interact in the course of cueing and channeling the spectators construction of the fabula (Bordwell 1985: 53). Bordwell allowed for the possibility of an intradiegetic, voice-over (VO) narrator, whether homodiegetic or heterodiegetic, but excluded the possibility of an extradiegetic film narrator.2 However, it has been repeatedly pointed out that Bordwells conception of film narration as a message with a perceiver but without any sender (Bordwell 1985: 62) is a logical impossibility: as Chatman

1 2

Following earlier suggestions from film theory to describe film as a cinematic narrative; see e. g. Metz (1974). A comparable argument is raised by Celestino Deleyto, who also seeks to restrict cinematic narration to explicit on-screen narration through voice-over or intertitles (Deleyto 1991: 164).

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argues, surely something gets sent, and this sending presupposes a sender of some kind (Chatman 1990: 127).3 It seems sensible to assume that film possesses narrative qualities, and that these narrative qualities must have an originating agency on the side of film, hence, a film narrator. Leaving aside Chatmans claim (contentious, in my view) that cinematic as well as literary narrators are put in place by implied authors (Chatman 1990: 132-133), I would tend to agree that film narrative presupposes the existence of a narrator and that this cinematic narrator is the transmitting agent of narrative, not its creator (Chatman 1990: 132). I would, however, furthermore posit that the presence of this cinematic narrator has to be inferred by the spectator to a much greater degree than is the case in literary narrative, and that film narration thus emerges out of an interaction between a film and its viewers. While a significant amount of research has been done on cinematic narrators, less attention has been paid to the possibility of a cinematic focalizer.4 This is surprising because focalization, through its basis in the notion of perspective, is closely associated with matters of vision. It would therefore seem a much more promising starting point for film narratology than narration, a concept originating with linguistic codes. In fact, focalization has been proposed as a concept bridging textuality and visuality (Bal 1997; 1999), and has been tentatively used as a tool for analyzing visual artifacts (Bal 1999; Yacobi 2002) as well as ones that combine the visual and the verbal (Horstkotte 2005). However, since Grard Genette first proposed the concept (Genette 1980), focalization has remained one of the most problematic, and hotly discussed, areas of narrative theory. Although Genette initially favored the term for its abstractness and for avoiding the optical connotations inherent in the French vision and champ (see Genette 1972: 206), roughly corresponding to English point of view, he later highlighted the intrinsically visual dimension of focalization by distinguishing between who speaks (narration) and who sees (focalization) (Genette 1980: 186). In his still later Narrative Discourse Revisited, however, Genette again downplayed the terms optical associations by suggesting that the question who sees? should be reformulated as who perceives? to include other sense perceptions (Genette 1988: 64). While some narratologists, particularly Mieke Bal, continue to stress the visual aspects of focalization, which make the concept the obvious place to begin easing in some elements of a visual narratology (Bal 1997: 161), others have argued that focalizations connection to seeing is merely metonymical or metaphorical (Jahn 1996: 243).
A similar point had already been made by Albert Laffey (1964): the succession of images in a film must, considered logically, have an originating agent beyond the screen (see esp. pp. 81f). See, however, Deleyto (1991).

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The term focalization, then, may have shifted problems of narrative analysis rather than solved them, and similar problems beset Franz K. Stanzels concept of figural narrative (Stanzel 1984), which theorizes the consistent use of a reflector character as a distinctive narrative situation separate from first-person and authorial narrative. Stanzels holistic conception of narrative situations mixes notions of seeing, experiencing and passing judgment with the narrative act itself, from which Genettes term of focalization was meant to be clearly distinguished. Apart from the duly noted inconsistencies of Stanzels system (Cohn 1981), this may point to unresolved problems concerning the distinction between narrator and focalizer, problems which also determine the ongoing discussion as to whether focalization is always linked to an anthropomorphized focalizing character (Bal 1997) or not (Genette 1980, 1988).5 To sum up, the different terms focalization, perspective, figural narrative and so forth, which continue to circulate in narrative theory, clearly indicate that there are widely divergent ideas of what constitutes what I broadly term focalization in this article. Despite their provenance from the optical domain, the concepts of focalization and point of view cover aspects of cognition and emotion as well as of perception; and they are insufficiently differentiated from narration. Not surprisingly, a survey of recent contributions to the field (Bal 1997; Herman 2002; Jahn 1996; Miller 2005; Nnning 2001; Phelan 2001; Rimmon-Kenan 2002; van Peer/Chatman 2001) reveals disagreements, blurred boundaries, and even fundamental uncertainties about what the term doesand does notencompass. Similar inconsistencies were also noted by Monika Fludernik, who concluded that [the] extensive debate on focalization has really demonstrated that the category is an interpretative one and not exclusively a textual category. (Fludernik 1996: 345) This article will consider the potential, as well as the shortcomings, inherent in a traveling concept of focalization through a study of two cases of intermedial translation, namely by comparing the literary and film versions of Robert Walsers Institute Benjamenta (Jakob von Gunten, 1909; film: Brothers Quay, 1995) and Franz Kafkas The Castle (Das Schlo, 1926; film: Michael Haneke, 1997), two novels which make intense and systematic use of fixed internal focalization. I believe that a parallel reading (or viewing) of the films can be productive for two reasons. Firstly, the original literary narratives differ in one important point: Institute Benjamenta is a first-person narrative in diary style; The Castle is told by a heterodiegetic narrator and consistently uses the protagonist, K., as a focal character or fixed internal focalizer. This enables me to contrast a heterodiegetic narration, which is comparatively easy to distinguish from internal focalization, with a homodiegetic narration, in
5

The debate is summed up by Jahn (1996: 245).

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which the distinction between narrator and focalizer is much less clear-cut. It will then, secondly, be interesting to see how the two film adaptations translate this distinction (or lack of distinction) into a filmic narrative and film focalization. 2. Kafkas The Castle: Ironic Distance between Narration and Focalization Franz Kafkas third and last novel The Castle, written in 1922 and published posthumously by Kafkas close friend Max Brod in 1926, exemplifies that combination of heterodiegetic narration with fixed internal focalization which Franz Stanzel termed the figural narrative situation (Stanzel 1984). As early as 1952, the Kafka scholar Friedrich Beiner referred to this form of focalization as an einsinniges Erzhlen, or narration from a single fixed perspective (reprinted in Beiner 1983). Apart from the fact that Beiners term unnecessarily confuses the positions of the impersonal narrator and the character-focalizer K., it bears noting that K.s focalization is not as consistent as Beiner assumed but contains a number of breaks and oddities, especially at the beginning of the novel (see Mller 2008: 523; Sheppard 1977: 406). It is significant for the later development of the narrative that Kafka wrote two unfinished drafts of the novels beginning, employing different narratorial positions, before finally coming up with a narrative situation which enabled him to continue beyond the novels initial scenes (see Jahr-aus 2006: 397-402). The first of these fragmentary beginnings, the so-called Frstenzimmer fragment, uses a heterodiegetic narrator who tells of the arrival of an unnamed guest at a country inn. This fragment already contains the thematic kernel of the later novel plot, because the guest talks about a fight in which he needs to engage (Jahraus 2006: 398). In the novel, K. frequently imagines his relation to the castle in terms of a fight. The Frstenzimmer fragment, however, breaks off before this theme can be further explored. Kafkas second false start already contains the first two sentences of The Castle, but employs a homodiegetic narrator, inasmuch as the protagonist K. here serves as a first-person narrator. This narrative situation continues until the narrator-protagonist engages in amorous relations with Frieda in the third chapter. At that point, the narrative abruptly reverts from a first-person to a third-person perspective, as in the earlier fragment. Kafka then writes a third beginning for his novel, this time employing a covert, heterodiegetic narrator. That third start finally develops into the fragmentary novel published in 1926 by Max Brod.

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I would suggest that a crucial factor in Kafkas decision to use an impersonal, covert or heterodiegetic narrator was the possibility of linking this type of narration with a specific form of fixed internal focalization that is endemic in modernist writing and is characterized by the frequent use of free indirect discourse (FID), reported speech, and reported thought.6 Franz Stanzels concept of figural narrative suggests, in fact, that these two aspects narration through a covert, impersonal, heterodiegetic narrator and fixed internal focalization tied to the consciousness of the central characterare mutually interdependent and together constitute a standard narrative situation. However, I will show that although the narration in The Castle presupposes a fixed internal focalization, this does not mean that the positions of narrator and focalizer are always congruent with each other. On the contrary, the protagonist-focalizers perception and interpretation of events is frequently at odds with the same events presentation in the narrative; indeed, the ironic distance between narrator and focalizer is a driving motor of the narrative. K.s focalization is closely linked to visual activity, especially in the early chapters of The Castle, where the protagonists gaze remains directed at the silhouette of the castle, whereas the later chapters focus on his attempts to gain insight into the inner workings of the castle bureaucracy. The very first sentences of the novel draw attention to the protagonist-focalizers gaze: There was no sign of the Castle hill, fog and darkness surrounded it []. K. stood a long time on the wooden bridge that leads from the main road to the village, gazing upward into the seeming emptiness. (Kafka 1998: 1)7 Curiously, the sentence suggests that although K. looks, time of day and weather conditions prevent him from actually perceiving anything. The assertion that there is, in fact, a castle on the mountain therefore has to be the narrators, not K.s, meaning that the initial statement is not internally focalized.8 In fact, K. is later surprised to hear that a castle perches above the village at all. We are, then, from the beginning of the novel confronted with conflicting statements about what is and what is not, what can and cannot be seen, setting up an ironic distance between narrator and focalizer.
6

Dorrit Cohn similarly speculates that the implausible near-effacement of the narrating self in Kafkas second attempt motivated the shift towards third-person narration (Cohn 1978: 169171). Grard Genette, on the other hand, remains unconvinced that a rewriting of [] The Castle into the first person would be such a catastrophe (Genette 1988: 112). Vom Schloberg war nichts zu sehn, Nebel und Finsternis umgaben ihn []. Lange stand K. auf der Holzbrcke die von der Landstrae zum Dorf fhrt und blickte in die scheinbare Leere empor. (Kafka 1994: 9) Klaus-Detlef Mller (2007) offers a different interpretation: he argues that although the first sentence could be authorial, the consistent narration from K.s perspective suggests that K. misses something (the castle) which he had expected (Mller 2007: 105). This is a circular, and therefore unconvincing, argument: if the very first sentence suggests zero focalization, then internal focalization cannot be consistent.

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The disparity between what the narrator asserts could be seen and what the focalizer actually perceives raises the question what, if anything, the narrator can be said to see. The perceptual capacities of narrators are a hotly contested narratological problem, with Seymour Chatman denying that the narrator can see anything and asserting that he is a reporter, not an observer of the story world in the sense of literally witnessing it and that narrating, therefore, is not an act of perception but of presentation or representation (Chatman 1990: 142). At least as far as the beginning of The Castle is concerned, however, the distinction between reporting something that is at least potentially visible and actually seeing it does not appear highly useful. Whether we call the narrators activity perception or presentation, he (I will stick with the male pronoun for conventions sake) suggests to the reader a visual impression of the castle that can then be compared with the visual impression (or lack thereof) that we receive through the focal character, K. Rather than drawing an absolute distinction between the focalizers visual perception and the narrators reporting of visual phenomena, I would like to refer to Manfred Jahns proposal to distinguish between different windows of focalization in the house of fiction (1996), which allows for distinctive forms of visual perception specific to both the narrator and the focalizer and therefore enables me to talk about the narrators visual perception. Jahns main point is that although narrators can, in principle, see, their perception has a different ontological status from (while being at least partly reliant on) that of the character-focalizer(s):
What the narrators actually see is determined by a number of factors: the shape of the window [], the view afforded by it [], the instrument used [], but above all, the viewers consciousness and its construction of reality. It is for this reason that narrators see things differently even when they are ostensibly watching the same show []. Before this backdrop enters a special story-internal character [] who sees the story events not, like the narrator, from a window perched aloft, but from within the human scene itself. Wholly unaware of both his/her own intradiegetic status and the part s/he plays in the extradiegetic universe comprising narrator and narratee, the reflectors consciousness nonetheless mirrors the world for these higher-level agents and thus metaphorically functions as a window him- or herself. (Jahn 1996: 252)

In the opening passage of The Castle, however, we find the narrator reporting on a potential visual perception that is notindeed, that cannot be mirrored for him by the reflector. The first sentences of The Castle are therefore at odds with the ensuing fixed internal focalization. While the narrators assurance of the castles actual existencewhich K. cannot see in the darknessas well as the objective geographical detail of the bridge that leads [] to the village (Kafka 1998: 1) seem to suggest a zero focalization (the narrator knows more than the characters), the following paragraphs make increasing use of internal focalization, culminating in the use of FID two

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pages later when we witness K. observing the village inn: So there was even a telephone in this village inn? They were certainly well equipped. (3)9 As the novel progresses, K.s thoughts and perceptionssometimes rendered in the form of indirect thought re-presentation, sometimes through the use of FIDcircle increasingly around the unknown castle and its employees, which K. supposes to be engaging in a fight with himself. After an initial telephone conversation confirms K.s claim that he has been appointed as a surveyor to the castle, he considers his position in the following terms:
K. listened intently. So the Castle had appointed him land surveyor. On the one hand, this was unfavorable, for it showed that the Castle had all necessary information about him, had assessed the opposing forces, and was taking up the struggle with a smile. On the other hand, it was favorable []. (5)10

As K.s position is confirmed by the castle, the initial zero focalization is replaced with an almost consistently fixed internal focalization, which is only interrupted by the direct speech of other characters and by Olgas longer intradiegetic narration about her sister Amalia. It is as if in order to be able to function as a focalizer, K. has to receive proof of his status and personhood from the castle. Apart from the first paragraph, no uncontroversial narratorial reference to the castle exists in the novel; the castle is always seen from K.s perspective, or else is subject to interpretation by K. or through the direct speech of other characters. That the second description of the castle is already based on K.s perceptionthat it is internally focalizedis made obvious by the verb seemed (schien), as well as by the use of deictics (here/hier) relative to K.s viewing position, thus establishing K. as the deictic center of focalization (see Jahn 1996: 256).
Now he saw the Castle above, sharply outlined in the clear air and made even sharper by the snow, which traced each shape and lay everywhere in a thin layer. Besides, there seemed to be a great deal less snow up on the hill than here in the village []. Here the snow rose to the cottage windows only to weigh down on the low roofs, whereas on the hill everything soared up, free and light, or at least seemed to from here. (Kafka 1998: 7)11
9 10

11

Wie, auch ein Telephon war in diesem Dorfwirtshaus? Man war vorzglich eingerichtet. (Kafka 1994: 11) K. horchte auf. Das Schlo hatte ihn also zum Landvermesser ernannt. Das war einerseits ungnstig fr ihn, denn es zeigte, da man im Schlo alles Ntige ber ihn wute, die Krfteverhltnisse abgewogen hatte und den Kampf lchelnd aufnahm. Es war aber andererseits auch gnstig []. (Kafka 1994: 13) Nun sah er oben das Schlo deutlich umrissen in der klaren Luft und noch verdeutlicht durch den alle Formen nachbildenden, in dnner Schicht berall liegenden Schnee. brigens schien oben auf dem Berg viel weniger Schnee zu sein als hier im Dorf []. Hier reichte der Schnee bis zu den Fenstern der Htten und lastete gleich wieder auf dem niedrigen Dach, aber oben auf dem Berg ragte alles frei und leicht empor, wenigstens schien es so von hier aus. (Kafka 1994: 16)

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Given the consistency of focalization, however, it is not surprising that it develops in scope as the novel progresses; for while the initial chapters revolve around the visual perception of the castle, K. later becomes increasingly preoccupied not with what is actually seen, but with speculation about the unknown inner workings of the castle and its presumed perception of himself. However, K.s interpretations do not always adequately represent the fictional world, a fact that can be gleaned from the readings he gives to a number of letters he receives from the castle.12 Since the narrator quotes these missives in their entirety, the reader can easily compare the letters themselves with K.s interpretation of them. For example, the first letter which K. receives from the hands of the messenger Barnabas confirms that he has been accepted into castle service, although it does not specify what that service is. It then assigns K. to the village chairman (23; Dorfvorsteher, 33) as his immediate superior, and asks him to convey messages to the castle exclusively through Barnabas. K. interprets this rather vague message as offering him a choice between two options: being a subordinate village worker (24; Dorfarbeiter, 34) who is connected to the castle in appearance only, or else being a village worker in appearance only, but in reality entirely determined by the messages delivered by Barnabas. K. then decides in favor of the second possibility, even though the letter had named no such alternative (see Alt 2005: 598). In view of this and of other highly fanciful interpretations of the castles messages and actions, the reader is led to strongly doubt K.s impression that while he is watching the castle, the castle is actively watching back, thereby confirming his standing on equal terms. K.s character focalization in the latter parts of the novel, then, does not constitute a perception of what is, but a model-building of what might be or can be inferred from what is, corresponding to Manfred Jahns concept of imaginary perception (Jahn 1996: 263). This has two possible consequences. On the one hand, K. emerges as a highly unreliable focalizer and quite a shady character to bootwe cannot even be sure that he is, indeed, a surveyor at all. Since the decision to reproduce the castle letters verbatim is the narrators, the contrast between the quoted letters and K.s interpretation suggests that the narrator aims to show us how unreliable K.s focalization is. On the other hand, as Peter-Andr Alt has pointed out, K.s focalization also has the opposite effect: the castle is constituted less as a real place with clearly delineated contours than as a distanced focusing point for K.s gaze, whose main effect is to unsettle the statements that the narrator makes about reality (Alt 2005: 592). Although the narrative situation is based on a combination of the narratorial and focalizing positions, an ironic distance is thus created between the two. Bearing in mind the different ontological status of
12

Michael Mller (2008: 524) raises a similar argument.

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the heterodiegetic narrator, however, it would appear that the ultimate irony is the narrators, at the expense of the focalizers credibility. 3. Cinematic and VO Narration in Michael Hanekes Das Schloss How can the combination of narration and focalization in Kafkas novel be translated into the medium of film? Before addressing that question, we first need to identify what forms, if any, focalization can generally take in a feature film. Summarizing Edward Branigans theory of subjectivity in film (1984), Andringa et al. (2001) suggest four techniques through which focalization may operate in film: (1) through so-called point of view (POV) shots, which show the focal character perceiving or thinking something; (2) through lighting and music; (3) through image sequences interrupting the film action to represent a characters thoughts; (4) or by means of a voice over (VO). Voice over, however, has also been identified as an aspect of film narrationindeed, Andringa et al. identify the VO in the film they analyze as an overt level 2 narrator, as opposed to the covert cinematic level 1 narrator (see Andringa et al. 2001: 136, table 8.1).13 Seymour Chatman similarly distinguishes between a showing narratorthe cinematic narratorand a second-order telling (VO) narrator who may be one component of the total showing, one of the cinematic narrators devices (Chatman 1990: 134). At the same time, however, Chatman also names VO as a possible element of focalization (filter, in Chatmans terminology), which may be effected on screen through eyeline match, shot-countershot, the 180-degree rule, voiceoff or voice-over [or] plot logic (157). If the same techniques can be constructed as either narration or focalization, it seems that the two are even more difficult to tell apart in film than in literature and that any differentiation between them is almost entirely a result of the viewers interpretation.14 Nevertheless, I will try to offer some insight into the differences between film narration and focalization through a reading of well-known Austrian film director Michael Hanekes adaptation of The Castle. The film script faithfully reproduces Kafkas chapter division, although the scenes themselves are often shortened so as to concentrate on the (perceived) essence of a chapter. Scenes are frequently separated by cut to black, giving the film a fragmentary and jerky appearance and subverting the sort of identificatory and illusionistic viewing attitude promoted by mainstream Hollywood cinema. A further disillusionment is effected by the films setting. While Kafkas novel was set in a claustrophobic universe bearing little or no
13 14

On VO narration, see also Kozloff (1988). Deleyto draws the more radical conclusion that focalisation and narration exist at the same level, and simultaneously in film (1991: 165).

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relation to any specific time and place, the film set suggests a setting close to the present, and in an Alpine region. Props, interior furnishings and characters clothes seem to derive from the 1970s, but their used and dated look suggests a later time, probably the 1990s when the film was made. On the side of sound, we find repeated allusions to Alpine folk music, both canned (from a radio at the inn) and live (peasants playing dance music in the inn). And while most of the actors speak little to no dialect, a number of minor characters such as Pepi (played by Birgit Linauer), Momus (Paulus Manker) and the village chairman (Nikolaus Paryla) exhibit traces of Austrian intonation, and Hans Brunswick (Conradin Blum) of Swiss dialect. However, these hints remain vague and are of a generically Alpine rather than a specifically regional nature. In the film, as in the novel, no precise location can be assigned to the village and castle, and this also serves to reflects Ks uncertain social status and underdetermined identity (Alt 2005: 594). Rather than suggesting a precise time and location, the films setting creates allusions to a specific theater aesthetic that is associated with the wellknown Swiss director Christoph Marthaler and with stage designer Anna Viebrock, with whom Marthaler frequently cooperates (for example in Die Stunde Null oder die Kunst des Servierens, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 1995; Kasimir und Karoline, also Deutsches Schauspielhaus, 1996). Characteristic for this aesthetic is the use of dated interiors, of Alpine folk music, and of grotesque acting. These elements unite to create an effect of spectatorial distance and disillusionment in the tradition of Brechtian epic drama. Haneke, too, introduces many grotesque and slapstick effects especially through the comical and childish nature of the two assistants (Gehilfen). The actors clothing, with the mens long johns and Friedas wrinkled stockings, is used to great comical effect in the films frequent dressing and undressing scenes, which also serve to show off the actors pale and distinctly unfit-looking physiques. Another source of humor can be found in the frequent close-ups focusing on the actors highly expressive mimicry. This concerns especially the assistants (played by Frank Giering and Felix Eitner), Frieda (Susanne Lothar) or Barnabas (Andr Eisermann), whereas lead actor Ulrich Mhe, who had already worked with Haneke in two earlier films (Bennys Video and Funny Games), plays K. with a markedly deadpan facial expression that adds to the characters enigmatic nature. Finally, the frequent repetition of scenes showing K. walking, stumbling or running through the snow-covered village emphasizes the cyclical nature of Kafkas tale while also adding to the slapstick effect of the film. Together, all of these aspectsmise en scne, setting, lighting, sound constitute the cinematic narration. However, the film also employs a secondlevel, overt VO narrator. The VO, spoken by Udo Samel, begins with the novels first sentence and recurs throughout the film, faithfully quoting the

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narrative usually one or two sentences at a time. Indirect speech and representation of thought in the novel are sometimes translated into dialogue in the film, but on the whole, the film is very faithful to the novels original text, with Kafkas language creating an estranging effect when combined with the semi-contemporary visual setting. VO narration usually bridges passages with little or no dialogue. Sometimes, however, VO also overlays spoken dialogue and in one central scene entirely disrupts the cinematic narration. This concerns K.s first love scene with Frieda on the floor of the Bridge Inn (Brckenhof), which is rendered exclusively in VO narration with almost no visual supportwhat is shown is not the couple making love, but only a still image of Klamms illuminated window (one of the castle bureaucrats residing at the inn). Like the fragmentary novel, the film ends abruptly. In fact, Michael Haneke was probably drawn to this fragmentary novel because of his own fragmentary aesthetics (Metelmann 2003: 35). However, the visual composition closes with a repetition of K. walking through the snow that is at odds with the VO narration describing a scene in one of the villagers houses. Indeed, film scholar Jrg Metelmann points out that the obvious and clearly audible separation of sound and image is frequently used in Hanekes aesthetics of deviation as a means of criticizing the characters and their actions (2003: 154-156, my translation). In this and other aspects Haneke is closely influenced by Brecht (Metelmann 2003: 156), a heritage which also accounts for his visual similarities to Marthaler and Viebrock. Hanekes explicit refusal to psychologically motivate his characters actions, which derives from Brechts concept of epic theater (Metelmann 2003: 159), could also account for his lack of attention to the focalizing FID passages in Kafkas novel. The films VO narration mostly concerns those passages of the novel that are not focalized (zero focalization, the narrator knows more than the characters). Sometimes, the VO refers to K.s auditory impressions, but rarely to his visual perception. The novels many instances of FID, especially the passages interpreting letters that are so central to the relation between narration and focalization, are left out entirely. The films use of VO, then, is not concerned with focalization, but with narration, and the other possible techniques for rendering focalization described by Branigan and Andringa et al.POV shot, sound and lighting, and the insertion of image sequences rendering thoughtare also left unexploited. Ulrich Mhes deadpan acting does not allow for the mimicking of point of view; the films sound and lighting function as part of a Brechtian aesthetic which creates the furthest possible distance between the audience and characters; no image sequences occur. An alternative possible source of focalization is the focus on K. created by the systematic use of shot/countershot between K. and his visual

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field. This may suggest some limited degree of internal focalization; surprisingly, however, the castle is never shown in the film and its description is not quoted in the VO narration. Focalization as a means of psychological insight is thus switched off, and the psychologically or psychoanalytically motivated conflict between K. and the castle is diminished. The limited use of internal focalization is restricted to rendering literal point of view, and a small portion of K.s view at that, with the looming castle cut out completely. 4. Robert Walsers Institute Benjamenta: Feigned Narration and the Reality of Dreams Where Kafkas Castle combined an impersonal, covert, heterodiegetic narrator with a fixed internal focalization, Robert Walsers Institute Benjamenta, written thirteen years earlier, is relayed by an overt homodiegetic narrator, the novels eponymous protagonist who is supposed to have written this novel in diary style. No independent focalization can be detected in the novel. This raises the thorny problem of whether narrators can (theoretically, narratologically) be focalizers. Answers to this question that have so far been suggested range from Patrick ONeills claim that the narrator is always a focalizer, having no choice whether to focalize or not [] only how to do so (ONeill 1994: 90), through James Phelans more moderate assertion that narrators can be focalizers (Phelan 2001), to Seymour Chatmans and Gerald Princes vehement denial: the narratoreven an intradiegetic and homodiegetic one []is never a focalizer because s/he is never part of the diegesis she presents [] s/he is an element of discourse and not story [] whereas focalization is an element of the latter (Prince 2001: 46; see Chatman 1990: 144-145). However, while the distinction between narration and focalization is sound in theory, my analysis will show that it is not always easy to uphold in an analysis. Narrator and focalizer are messily intertwined especially in intradiegetic-homodiegetic narrative (as indeed Princes own assertion above suggests). For instance, Princes absolute distinction between story and discourse fails to take into account the specifics of retrospective narrative, in which the same character can function as a character in the story (in the past), and as the narrator, i. e. producer of discourse, in the present. This means that a narrator (in the present) may rely on his own focalization (in the past) (see Phelan 2001: 53). In fact, Seymour Chatman points out that [the] homodiegetic or first-person narrator did see the events and objects at an earlier moment in the story, but his recountal is after the fact and thus a matter of memory, not of perception (1990: 144-145). In retrospective homodiegetic narrative, therefore, narrator and focalizer, while functionally

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distinct, coincide in the same person. The same may, however, also be true of non-retrospective homodiegetic narrative, for example in introspective diary writing, where the writer may rely on his or her own focalization at a time close to, or sometimes coinciding with, the time of writing. Phelan concludes that a human narrator cannot report a coherent sequence of events without also revealing his or her perception of those events (2001: 57); I shall take this assertion as a starting point for my discussion of focalization and narration in Institute Benjamenta. A second point to bear in mind when we turn to Walsers novel in diary format is James Phelans reminder that treating narrators as potential focalizers enables us to think about an important aspect of narration, namely the self-consciousness of the narrator (ibid.: 52). Clearly, the presentation of self-consciousness is central to diary writing, and I will therefore attempt to clarify the different aspects of narration and of focalization involved in it. The extremely rudimentary plot of Institute Benjamenta can be summarized in few words. The novel is set in Benjamentas Boys School, a school for aspiring domestics in which nothing is taught, where the teachers sleep as if petrified all day and the students waste whole days smoking in bed. Almost the only activity at the school is the pupils constant spying on each other and on their teachers; occasionally the protagonist takes strolls through the unnamed modern metropolis where the novel is set (presumably Berlin), a city that overwhelms the spectator with its manifold impressions. A position as a servant, for which the school is supposed to prepare Jakob and which Mr Benjamenta repeatedly promises him, never materializes. When Miss Benjamenta, the school principals sister, dies, all the pupils are suddenly given positions; only Jakob remains behind as a traveling companion for Mr Benjamenta. Like K. in The Castle, Jakob is a non-entity, possessed by a need to completely efface himself. As Rochelle Tobias explains, Walsers protagonists are generally incapable of forming attachments or returning the affection directed at them since they have no defining traits save that they mirror the characters they meet (Tobias 2006: 293). The enigmatic setting in Benjamentas school thus mirrors the impenetrable character of the protagonistnarrator. As a result, Jakobs diary focuses less on Jakobs own personal development than on his relationships with other characters: on his interactions with the Institutes reclusive director, which has distinctly homoerotic undertones (e. g. Walser 1995: 87f./Walser 1985: 105), his budding love affair with the directors sister, Lisa (ibid.: 99f./120), and his relations with Kraus, the institutes model student who serves not only as Jakobs antithesis or antagonist in his love affair with Lisa Benjamenta, but also as a kind of doppelganger (see Grenz 1974: 141-142; Greven 1978: 173; Tobias 2006: 299).

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The almost complete lack of plot is compensated by Jakobs rich inner life, which produces dreams and fantasies that are increasingly disconnected from reality. Jakob often likens his surroundings to fairytales or biblical stories. Some of these comparisons are simple fantasies of wish fulfillment, such as his extended and repeated reflections on what he would do if he were rich: I would like to be rich, to ride in coaches and squander money. (Walser 1995: 5)15 Besides their obvious motivation as wish fulfillment, however, Jakobs fantasies about being rich (see also Walser 1995: 61-63 / Walser 1985: 75-77), or about being a war lord in the year 1400 (Walser 1995: 108-110), also serve the function of creating an alternative reality to the boredom and frustration that characterize student life at the Institute. In contrast to the wealth fantasies, which are usually narrated in the subjunctive, the warlord storyalthough initially designated imaginings (90)is rendered in the indicative, and it is interesting to dwell a little on the function of focalization in this extended fantasy. Jakobs impressions of the dealings he has with his generals are rich in detail and frequently refer to sense perceptions, which makes the reader temporarily forget the different ontological status of these descriptions from those relating to his fellow students. While the beginning and end of the passage foreground Jakob in his narratorial rolewith comments on the unreal status of his imaginationsthe central part of the sequence, therefore, highlights his role as a focalizer, and one with a highly imaginative and speculative perception of his surroundings. To be sure, Jakob is still the agent relating these fantasies and impressions. But if we treat focalization as an interpretative rather than a textual category, there are good reasons why we should experience Jakob more as a focalizer and less as a narrator, and these have to do with his complete lack of agency in his own fate. Not only does he consistently confuse dream and reality, he also lacks insight and understanding of his own inner life, thereby becoming a mystery to myself (5). The most extended of Jakobs dream sequences, and the one where dream and reality most intermix, is the night scene in the darkened classroom (81-85/97-103), in which he experiences being led by Miss Benjamenta through the vaults of poverty and deprivation (83; Gnge des NotLeidens und der furchtbaren Entbehrung, 100) into the inner chambers of the Institute, where the Benjamenta siblings reside and which only Kraus has previously been allowed to penetrate. In contrast to Jakobs impressions of the metropolis and to his fantasies about being rich, this sequence is also rendered in the indicative. However, Jakob stresses at the beginning that the experience was incomprehensible and a myster[y] (81) and later sees it dissolving into a gluey and most unpleasant river of doubt (85). After the
15

Ich mchte gern reich sein, in Droschken fahren und Gelder verschwenden. (Walser 1985: 7)

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girl has disappeared, Jakob concludes that she was the enchantress who had conjured up all these visions and states (ibid.). Afterwards, he expresses regret over having given in to wanton pleasures of easefulness (ibid.; lsterne Bequemlichkeit, 103), belatedly suggesting that the dreamlike sequence may have been motivated by sexual desire for Miss Benjamenta. As Rochelle Tobias correctly remarks, [each] room is the translation of an allegorical figure; each represents a particular phrase or mood as a physical environment (Tobias 2006: 302), and this suggests that the rooms materialize Jakobs feelings and emotions. Alternatively, however, the inner chambers could equally be manifesting the Fruleins words, as Tobias also suggests when she says: Throughout the episode, the phrases that Frulein Benjamenta utters appear as diverse settings. (Tobias 2006: 303) Because of its dream logic, the passage lends itself to psychoanalytic interpretations focusing either on Jakobs attachment to the Benjamentas or on the use of birth metaphors (see Tobias 2006: 304). In this and other passages, Jakob functions as a narrator insofar as he is the transmitting agent of the narrative, but since what he transmits is almost exclusively concerned with dreams and fantasies, it would appear difficult if not impossible to separate the two acts of narrating and focalizing. Indeed, different aspects of narration and focalization constantly blend into one another, with Jakob expressing doubts about what sort of perception he is describing: Is he reporting on the state of affairs in the Institute Benjamenta, for instance, or are these rather memories from the prep school he attended in his home town? It is, moreover, not at all clear whether Jakob is here reporting an earlier perception, or whether the styling of sense impressions as dreams and fairytales does not occur in the act of composing his diary, in which case it would belong to the order of narration. We might, then, turn once again to Manfred Jahns suggestion that there are different windows of focalization in the house of fiction and describe Jakobs role as that of a narratorial (rather than reflector-mode) focalizer (Jahn 1996: 256-7). Or we could employ James Phelans (2001) terminology and describe Institute Benjamenta as a combination of two types of narration: narrators focalization and voice, and characters focalization and narrators voice (with character referring to Jakob-as-experiencer, and narrator to Jakob the diary-writer). Phelans proposal has the advantage of enabling us to differentiate between Jakob as a character and Jakob as a diary writer. As Manfred Jahn has pointed out, Genettes question who speaks? inadequately captures the narratorial function because it buries the narratologically relevant distinction between speaker and writer (and thinker, in interior monologue) (Jahn 1996: 246). Jakob, of course, poses as a diary writer; the novels subtitle designates it as a diary, and Jakobs narration relies heavily on irony and word play, thereby calling attention to the diarys composition (Tobias 2006: 299).

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However, a number of discrepancies raise suspicions that the book cannot really be a diary, and have led to the novels interpretation as a feigned diary (Gling 1992: 170-179; Tobias 2006: 301-302). Among these are the intricate structure with its repetition of leitmotifs and intertextual allusions to Grimms fairytales and to biblical stories, and the fact that the diarist explicitly addresses such compositional aspects, for example when he writes Once again I must go back to the very beginning, to the first day. (24; Ich mu noch einmal ganz zum Anfang zurckkehren, 29). Furthermore, the diarist seems to possess an overview over the unfolding of the story, including events occurring later in the book, as when he writes I shall have much to say about Kraus. (20; Von Kraus werde ich sehr viel reden mssen, 25). Finally, these two statements suggest that Jakob is directing his diary writing at an addressee other than himselfthat he imagines, in other words, a reader for his journal. Indeed, he frequently addresses a reader and speculates how that reader will respond to his writing: I must now report a matter which will perhaps raise a few doubts. (43; Ich mu jetzt etwas berichten, was vielleicht einigen Zweifel erregt, 53), or he even uses direct forms of address: Im gabbling somewhat again, arent I? (87; Ich schwatze wieder ein wenig, nicht wahr?, 105). In light of these metaleptic deviations from the fiction of diary writing, Rochelle Tobias has proposed reading the novel as a double fiction in which the diary of a student is enclosed within the diary of another person bearing the same name as him (Tobias 2006: 301). Tobias posits that this makes Jakob simultaneously a homo- and a heterodiegetic narratora logical impossibility, because the two are ontologically incompatible positions. If the diary is feigned, however, then why should we assume that it contains a reliable narration? It makes much more sense to assume an unreliable homodiegetic-extradiegetic narrator who fantasizes about attending a school for domestics and produces a fake diary about these fantasies. In this interpretation, there would be no character called Jakob, only a narrator who produces a hypothetical narrative including a narratorial focalization of these hypothetical events and their hypothetical perception.16But how can such a mind-bogglingly complex interweaving of narration and focalization ever be translated into a feature film, and how have the film-makers interpreted the novels juggling of dream and reality?

16

I use hypothetical narration in analogy to David Hermans proposal of a hypothetical focalization (Herman 2002: 303).

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5. Focalization and Visual Distortion in Institute Benjamenta or This Dream People Call Human Life A novel without a plot, narrated by a protagonist with no defining personality, would in any case seem an odd choice for a film adaptation, but especially for a first feature film. However, the twin directors of Institute Benjamenta or This Dream People Call Human Life, the brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay, are known for their avant-garde films which consistently and systematically subvert normal viewing conventions. Indeed, the Quays seem to have been drawn to the novels anti-narrative aspects, for the film focuses on the dreaminess and ephemerality of Jakobs sense impressions and on his relationships with other characters inside Benjamentas school, while the many scenes where Jakob leaves the Institute and describes his impressions of busy life in the modern metropolis are left out altogether. Without the realistic elements of urban life to balance it off, the school interior merges seamlessly into a surreal or fantastic space. This fantastic interpretation of the novel is supported through an anachronistic film aesthetic referring back to the expressionist films of the 1920s, with the choice of black and white, the exaggerated and pathos-laden gestures of the actors and the hints at interand subtitles evoking the silent film of the 1910s and 20s. The film also integrates elements from puppet and shadow theater and from animation film. Through its recurrent use of self-reflective techniques and its highly unusual aesthetic, which is far removed from audience expectations gleaned from realistic Hollywood movies, Institute Benjamenta self-consciously foregrounds the presence of a cinematic narrator. How, then, is Jakobs dreamlike focalization conveyed in the film, and how does it relate to the cinematic narrator? The first thing the spectator notices is that the fairytale world, which Jakob experienced mainly in the metropolitan street life in the novel and which was often characterized as unreal through the use of as if and subjunctive clauses, now enters the school and is visualized as the intrusion of a Grimms fairytale forest into the house. The reality status of this intrusion is much less certain than in the novel, where it is clearly marked as fantasy or metaphor. Is the novels use of focalizationJakobs subjective perceptiontranslated, then, into narration (of a fictive reality)? I think not: the fairytale forest retains a recognizable fantastic dimension. So it remains open to interpretation whether the fairytale actually enters the house or whether this is a result of Jakobs distorted perception. For Jakob is either alone in these scenes, so that his vision cannot be challenged by other characters, or else he is together with Lisa Benjamenta, the object of his desire. But his impressions are never intersubjectively confirmed by other students. It is

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therefore impossible to ascertain whether the setting is supposed to be realistic or whether it constitutes a visualization of Jakobs thoughts and fantasieswhat Seymour Chatman has referred to as a mindscreen effect (1990: 159). Thus, the mise-en-scne of those scenes where Jakob is alone in front of the camera could constitute an effect of focalization. The disorientation created by the films enigmatic visual setting and use of chiaroscuro effects is heightened through visual distortions created by filming through a goldfish glass or through uneven window panes. The films foregrounding of setting, dcor and props, with great attention to the marginal, combines with an improvisational style that owes more to a sense of musical rhythm than to the chronological unfolding of narrative. The brothers Quay explain:
We demand that the decors act as poetic vessels [] . As for what is called the scenario: at most we have only a limited musical sense of its trajectory, and we tend to be permanently open to vast uncertainties, mistakes, disorientations as though lying in wait to trap the slightest fugitive encounter. (quoted in Buchan 1998: 7)

This lack of narrative embedding leaves the interpretation of the films visual style open to the viewer. As Suzanne Buchan writes in an article about the Quay brothers work: Unencumbered by narrative, the viewer can descend to various levels of bewilderment or enchantment. (Buchan 1998: 4) Buchan has named several techniques which the brothers use in order to disturb the viewers experience of continuous space, especially the use of macro lenses which provide virtually no depth of field or their landmark fast pan shift or rapid camera movement within a continuous diegetic space, which results in a flicker effect suggestive of spatial fluidity (ibid.: 9). Moreover, their use of retroactive cutting, i. e. cutting from a close-up view to a more distant camera angle, reverses expository conventions of narrative continuity editing and therefore also serves to strengthen the films nonnarrative aspects and to disorient viewers expectations (ibid.). Where Walsers novel played with the tension between the reality of metropolitan life and Jakobs dreamlike perception of it, and opposed the familiar milieu of the modern metropolis with the strange setting inside Benjamentas school, the film systematically cuts any ties to the viewers reality and rigidly limits information about the strange, fantastic setting. This makes it very difficult for viewers to formulate expectations about what is going to happen and to make interpretative decisions about the status of what they are seeing. However, the viewers understanding is helped by the films fixed internal focalization through Jakob, whose perception of events remains a constant point of reference. Frequently, Jakobs role as focalizer is indicated through POV shots which show him seeing something, often through the use of optical devices, through windows, keyholes and the like. This might

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lead us to conclude that other distorted views are also an effect of Jakobs focalization rather than of (cinematic) narration. That Jakob functions as the films internal focalizer is also suggested by the films use of VO. As in Hanekes adaptation of The Castle, the VO passages in Institute Benjamenta are verbatim quotations from the novel. Unlike the impersonal VO narration in Hanekes film, however, the VO in Institute Benjamenta is clearly attributable to the central character, Jakob: although the words are spoken from the off, the camera circles around Jakoban unusual form of POV shot which suggests that he is to be identified as the source of these words. However, the viewer does not at the same time see Jakobs mouth speaking these words. This creates the impression that the VO expresses Jakobs thoughts and is therefore an effect of focalization, whereas the VOs sourcethe written diary in Walsers novelbelongs, of course, to the order of narration. Institute Benjamenta, then, expresses focalization in a number of ways, including POV shot, VO, and the use of mindscreen sequences. However, what does and does not constitute focalization in this film is in effect an interpretative decision, as evidenced by the fact that the fairytale forest scenes which I have read as mindscreen sequences (and therefore as focalizations) have been interpreted as the depiction of a strange parallel world in the fantasy genre (and thus as narration) by most of the films reviewers. 6. Conclusion Various assumptions circulate around the possible relations between narration and focalization. By comparing two internally focalized literary narratives, I have shown that there is a fairly straightforward distinction between narration and focalization in heterodiegetic narrative, but that such a distinction is considerably more difficult to draw in homodiegetic narrative. Much of this difficulty rests on the fact that the distinction between the two agents is not a property of the text but constitutes an interpretation of the readers, with different texts leaving more or less scope for such interpretation. In Kafkas Castle, I have identified strong and prominently placed clues that the narrators window of focalization (which includes a description of the castle) is distinct from that of the focal character, K. (who cannot see the castle and is later surprised to hear of its existence). From the beginning of the novel, then, readers are made aware of K.s limited perspective; in later parts of the novel, the narrators verbatim quotation of the letters K. receives is not reconcilable with K.s interpretation of these letters, suggesting that K. is to be regarded as an unreliable focalizer ironically presented by the narrator.

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Walsers Institute Benjamenta leaves a considerably wider scope for interpreting the relation between narration and focalization, as evidenced by the divergent readings given by Walser scholars, which themselves depend considerably on the concept of focalization employed. My own interpretation of Jakob is that of an unreliable homodiegetic-extradiegetic narrator who fantasizes about attending a school for domestics and produces a fake diary about these fantasies. According to this reading, there is no character called Jakob, only a narrator who produces a hypothetical narrative including a narratorial focalization of a series of hypothetical events and their hypothetical perception. In both novels, character focalization (in Institute Benjamenta, hypothetical character focalization) is embedded in a higher-order, narratorial (window of) focalization, suggesting that focalizers cannot be narrative agents on a par with narrators, since focalization is always to some extent intermingled with, and dependent on, narration. In an article entitled Narrative Theory and/or/as Theory of Interpretation, Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Mller (2003: 215) have argued that narratology may serve as a heuristic for the interpretation of narrative texts if it is neutral with regard to the interpretative framework, i. e. if it is usable in conjunction with various approaches to interpretation.17 However, if narratological concepts such as focalization and narration do not objectively describe narrative texts, but are themselves always already interpretations, they cannot then provide a neutral basis for interpretation. This means that we have to account for the construction of narrative agents by real readers (rather than ideal or implied readers) much more closely than most narratological frameworks have done to date. One notable exception is the theory of psychonarratology proffered by Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon (2003: 2), who argue that the forms of narrative discourse are only meaningful when understood in the context of their reception and that the narrator, as well as other narrative agents, must be viewed as a reader construction (ibid.: 72). The interpretative nature of narratological concepts becomes even more obvious when employed in the context of film narrative, since narration as well as focalization has to be inferred by film spectators to a greater degree than by readers of literary narratives. Moreover, both concepts invariably undergo great changes when applied to film. Whereas the narrator serves as a source of spoken or written utteranceoften, if not always, of an anthropomorphized naturein literary narrative, no single, unified or self-identical source of utterance can be identified in film narrative. The concept of a cinematic narrator remains a highly abstract construction that can never coincide with any one character in the manner of homodiegetic literary nar17

See also Tom Kindts article in this volume.

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rative. The identification of a film focalizer is, if anything, even more speculative. The camera does not usually represent the visual perspective of a focal character but that of the cinematic narrator; nor does film easily lend itself to the representation of cognitive processes. So-called POV shots, which show a focal character thinking or perceiving something, may be understood as either narration or focalization. The use of VO, which has been suggested as another source of focalization, remains at best an auxiliary construction and one that can, again, be constructed either as narration or as focalization. Not only is the identification of narrative agents in film narratives an interpretative act, it also has far-ranging consequences for how the fictional world is interpreted. Thus, depending on whether we understand the POV shots in Institute Benjamenta as narration or focalization, the fairytale forest can be assigned two ontologically distinct interpretations, either as a real forest in a fantasy setting, or as Jakobs subjective imagination within a more realistic setting. The application of narratological concepts to film thus remains somewhat speculative. Furthermore, it bears repeating that terms like narration and focalization describe distinctly different phenomena in film and in textual narrative. The great differences between literary and film narration and focalization suggest that narratological concepts are not neutral categories, but media-dependent; as Fotis Jannidis (2003: 50) has written, narrative should always be treated as something anchored in a medium, making narratology a collective term for a series of specialized narratologies and not a self-sufficient metascience of its own. Works Cited
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Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Chatman, Seymour. 1990. Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cohn, Dorrit. 1981. The Encirclement of Narrative. On Franz Stanzels Theorie des Erzhlens. In: Poetics Today 2:2, p. 157-182. Deleyto, Celestino. 1991. Focalisation in Film Narrative. In: Atlantis XIII (1-2), p. 159-177. Fludernik, Monika. 1996. Towards a Natural Narratology. London/New York: Routledge. Genette, Grard. 1972. Figures III. Paris: ditions du Seuil. Genette, Grard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Transl. by J. E. Lewin. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press. Genette, Grard. 1988. Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gling, Andreas. 1992. Abendstern und Zauberstab. Studien und Interpretationen zu Robert Walsers Der Gehlfe und Jakob von Gunten. Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann. Grenz, Dagmar. 1974. Die Romane Robert Walsers. Weltbezug und Wirklichkeitsdarstellung. Munich: Fink. Greven, Jochen. 1978. Figuren des Widerspruchs. Zeit und Kulturkritik im Werk Robert Walsers. In: Katharina Kerr (ed.). ber Robert Walser. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, p. 164193. Haneke, Michael (dir.). 1997. Das Schloss. Kino International Corp. Herman, David. 2002. Story Logic. Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Horstkotte, Silke. 2005. The Double Dynamics of Focalization in W. G. Sebalds The Rings of Saturn. In: Jan Christoph Meister (ed.). Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism. Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, p. 25-44. Jahn, Manfred. 1996. Windows of Focalization. Deconstructing and Reconstructing a Narratological Concept. In: Style 30:2, p. 241-267. Jahraus, Oliver. 2006. Kafka. Leben, Schreiben, Machtapparate. Stuttgart: Reclam. Jannidis, Fotis. 2003. Narrative and Narratology. In: Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Mller (eds.): What is Narratology? Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 35-54. Kafka, Franz. 1994 [1926]. Das Schlo. Roman, in der Fassung der Handschrift. In: Hans-Gerd Koch (ed.). Gesammelte Werke in zwlf Bnden. Nach der Kritischen Ausgabe. Vol. 4. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch. Kafka, Franz. 1998. The Castle. Transl. by Mark Harman. New York: Schocken Books. Kindt Tom and Hans-Harald Mller. 2003. Narrative Theory and/or/as Theory of Interpretation. In: T. K. and H.-H. M. (eds.): What is Narratology? Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 205-219. Kozloff, Sarah. 1988. Invisible Storytellers: Voice-over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Laffey, Albert. 1964 [1947]. Le rcit, le monde et le cinema. In: A. L. Logique du cinema. Paris: Masson, p. 51-90. Lothe, Jakob. 2000. Narrative in Fiction and Film. An Introduction. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Metelmann, Jrg. 2003. Zur Kritik der Kino-Gewalt. Die Filme von Michael Haneke. Munich: Fink.

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