خلاصة:
Using Gérard Genette's ideas, this essay would focus on how in "Venus and Adonis" the narrator changes histoire into recit. Previously, it was always thought that Shakespeare was the narrator of this poem. However, the new perspectives presented by literary theorists such as Genette opened up novel discussions on this issue. As is stated by Kolin (1997), the formalist approach questioned the centrality of Shakespeare as the narrator and instead introduced the possibility of having "polysemous narrators" (p. 50). First it would be useful to clarify on Genette's ideas, and then to see how his ideas would promote a more thorough understanding of the poem by Shakespeare.
ملخص الجهاز:
"In Shakespeare's poem, the narrator by adopting the voice and the point of view of Adonis and Venus gives them a more vivid individuality, as well as a voice of their own, which enables them to express themselves in ways we do not see in the original story.
In the case of duration, we can say that in the classical mythological story, we are simply told of the love of Venus and others for Adonis, but in this poem the initial pages are all dedicated to the passionate love of Venus for him, or in the original histoire, we are informed of the death of Adonis during the hunt, Venus's grief and his metamorphosis, but in this poem pages and pages, stanzas after stanzas are devoted to describing, and narrating these events.
The other way by which the narrator in this poem creates distance, and makes us as readers be aware of his presence is by all the time reminding us of our position as spectators, "look how he can, she cannot choose but love / and by her fair immortal hand she swears" (Shakespeare "Venus and Adonis," 79-80).
In the case of the perspective, we could say that in the poem, there is an omniscient narrator, so we have a non-focalized narrative, but at times the narrator takes the point of view of Venus and Adonis, thus at times the narrative becomes internally focalized when the point of view becomes restricted to a given character, so the system of focalization changes and we end up with a system which Dijk calls polymodalities."