Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2017

Character Focalization in Children’s Novels

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

  • Explores the ways focalizing characters experience their worlds perceptually and psychologically
  • Shows that contemporary realistic novels written in the third person can be richly meaningful
  • Presents emoting profiles for each focalizing character

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
  2. Introduction

    • Don K. Philpot
    Pages 1-7
  3. Investigating Character Focalization in Children’s Novels

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 9-9
    2. Conceptualizing Character Focalization

      • Don K. Philpot
      Pages 11-43
    3. Focalizing Structures

      • Don K. Philpot
      Pages 45-93
  4. Perceptual and Psychological Development

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 133-133
  5. Personal Development and Understandings

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 209-209
    2. Understandings About Self

      • Don K. Philpot
      Pages 211-234
    3. Understandings About Others

      • Don K. Philpot
      Pages 235-255
    4. Understanding Personal Experiences

      • Don K. Philpot
      Pages 257-279
  6. Character Focalization in and Beyond Children’s Novels

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 281-281
  7. Back Matter

    Pages 301-314

About this book

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of character focalization in ten contemporary realistic children’s novels. The author argues that character focalization, defined as the location of fictional world perception in the mind of a character, is a prominent textual structure in these novels. He demonstrates how significant meanings are conveyed in a variety of forms related to characters’ personal and interpersonal experiences. Through close analysis of each text, moreover, he exposes distinctive perceptual, psychological, and social-psychological patterns in the opening chapters of each novel, which are thereafter developed by the principles of continuation, augmentation, and reconfiguration. This book will appeal to scholars, teachers, and students in the fields of narrative studies, stylistics, children’s literature scholarship, linguistics, and education.

Reviews

“This ambitious study tracks and categorises the experiences of fictional child characters in ten examples of contemporary realism for children, with publication dates spanning fifty years … . this study represents a welcome application of systemic functional linguistics to the study of children’s literature and provides many interesting ideas and practical tools for future research.” (Sarah Hardstaff, Barnboken, Vol. 41, 2018)


Authors and Affiliations

  • Dept of Teacher Education, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, USA

    Don K. Philpot

About the author

Don K. Philpot is Professor of Reading and Literacy at Shippensburg University, USA, where he specializes in the field of children’s literature stylistics. He teaches courses on disciplinary literacy, children’s literature, and literacy instruction for diverse students. His current research focuses on resilient fictional children and their transformative effects on real children.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access