Abstract

This paper discusses the concept of panoptical narration based on the idea of Foucault about panopticon which is this case is applied in the teaching of literature. Comparably to the scheme of the disciplined society envisaged by Foucault, where people are observed by a powerful guard that remains invisible himself, this concept is applied to the relations between narrators and fictional character. This kind of Foucauldian reading of the novel has been in particular applied to the writers belonging to realism, whose works have been qualified as panoptical (Dorrit Cohn, 1999). This paper proposes the usage of the concept of panoptical narration as a strategy for teaching literature in order to challenge students for opened and liberated interpretations of meaning. The paper argues that the pedagogical stylistic by means of linguistic analysis of narrative strategies avoids prescriptive readings and encourages students to sharpen their critical thinking skills.