Survey of Narrative Elements and Focus of Observation in “Turn of the Screw” as a Novel

This article means to survey the focus of attention and the focus of narration in the narrative theories within a novel entitled as ”Turn of the Screw”. Within the narrative approaches, there is no tendency to make discriminations between the two aspects of point of view in narration. The distinction between the two concepts of narration and focus of observation were of notice before Gerard Genette; the famous French narrative theorist. Yet Gerard Genette made a systematic study on this distinction. Genette used these two different terms for point of view, in which the first one relates to the act in which verbal transfer of story takes place by the storyteller, ( narrator in literature) while the second one refers to the focus through which the narration is observed from these aspects; setting ( place –time) , psychologically and ideologically. Genette believes that in every narrative work two distinct aspects of point of view might be manifested through one single person or be transferred simultaneously through a few narrators and observers. In a narrative work such as “Turn of the Screw” by Henry James, which is as a matter of fact a prominent work in narrative literature, one can observe different aspects of point of view, in addition to focus of attention there. Therefore this research intends to study the two distinct aspects of point of view as mentioned and further on point to their significance within the best world literary works.