Kevin McIlvoy: Focalization (January 2013)

The tensions of looking and being looked at are essential in all narrative. What asks to be focused upon? What resists focalization? At what moment does something come into focus, and at what critical moment does something elude focus? For some writers, a significant breakthrough occurs when they move past their first assumptions about “looking” behaviors. McIlvoy’s lecture concentrates primarily on Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), specifically to the editions that include the “Dunnett Landing” stories.