Autobiography as a Study of Self-Progression Through Shifting Focalization

Abstract

The study seeks to understand the role of shifting focalization in autobiography to study self- progression of the autobiographer from experiencing self to narrating self. In “Black Boy” - autobiography of Richard Wright- first person narrator assumes, whenever required, the authority of a third-person narrator to give an objective account of Wright’s past, and to do so makes full use of the temporal landscape to present the same self from different angles and in different moments. Through this shifting of focalization, readers come to know different versions of one’s self at different stages of life, and it is made possible for the readers to study self-progression in the backdrop of a given socio-political scene. The study is qualitative and the selected text is evaluated under the light of the theory of focalization presented by Mieke Bal