“Point of View” as a Compositional Technique

The article attempts to clarify the literary terminology, namely, to give a clear and consistent semantic content to the term “point of view”. A brief overview of the definitions of one of the key concepts of narratology, presented both in encyclopedic and educational publications, reveals a picture of conceptual and terminological discord, in which the term is blurred and meaningless. Using examples from classical texts of Russian literature, “point of view” is considered as the most important principle of the subjective organization of narrative prose.

point of view, perspective, subject of perception, narrative, narratology, narrator, character.