Journal of the stylistic of Persian poem and prose
volume Number 18، number In Volume 6، September 2025 ، issue Number 112

Analysis of Focalization Techniques in the Story of “Khosrow and Shirin” by Nezami Ganjavi

Mina Ghasemi Ebrahimabadi , Mohammad Sadegh Basiri (Author in Charge), Najmeh Hosseini Sarvari

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: "Focalization" – a pivotal concept in Gérard Genette"s structuralist narratology – examines the regulation of perspectives and distribution of information within narrative discourse, playing a central role in analyzing literary narrative structures. Genette"s fundamental distinction between two principal narrative agents:

The observer of events (experiencing subject)

The narrator of occurrences (narrating voice)

defines two discrete functional operations in the narrative framework:

The process of verbal enunciation

The process of visual perception.

Functioning as a mediating mechanism between audience and textual fabric, the focalizing agent (the operative logic directing focalization) operates through multidimensional planes—perceptual, psychological, and ideological—with variable parameters that actively configure audience perception, thereby generating distinctive hermeneutic effects.

METHODOLOGY: This research Analyzes the mechanisms of focalization employed to explore the knowledge distribution within the narrative of Nezami Ganjavi"s epic poem, "Khosrow and Shirin."

FINDINGS: When the communicative framework arising from narration is structured and orchestrated by an agent known as the narrator, Nezami constructs a system of specific intellectual and cultural components. These components, across different periods, convey significant messages that can lead us to certain identity-forming elements.

CONCLUSION: The findings of this research indicate that the narrator-focalizer, constrained by the direct transmission of thought from the dominant voice/omniscient narrator, who propagates a singular ideology, creates a significant distance from the text"s communicative framework (Nezami"s construct, shaped by the interaction between the audience, narrator, and characters). This, in turn, diminishes the reader"s sense of unity with the work, consequently leading to the formation of a monophonic structure. The observation and narration of event sequences by the narrator-focalizer, and the utilization of various aspects of external focalization as the most frequent technique employed in the narrative, are arranged in such a way that, in most cases, the reader possesses more information than the characters. This generates a dual feeling of suspense and curiosity, alongside ambiguity and a disruption of the continuity of action sequences in the story, within the reader"s mind.

Keyword
Narratology , Khosrow and Shirin , Nezami Ganjavi , Gérard Genette , focalization.

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