IMPORTANT

Please do not mix things up. You are touching upon two quite different questions:

1. With regard to the narrator you can ask: (a) is it a first-person narrator or a third-person narrator, (b) is the narrator's perspective rather limited or rather unlimited.

2. With regard to the characterisation of a fictional character you can ask: (a) is it figural or authorial (better: narratorial) characterisation, (b) is it explicit or implicit characterisation.

--> The question, therefore, is NOT if a narrator is figural or authorial, but if the characterisation is figural or authorial (better: narratorial).

BE CAREFUL: in a text which is told by a 3rd-person narrator, there can still be figural characterisation, i.e. when one fictional character characterises another fictional character; and there can also be narratorial characterisation, i.e. when the 3rd-person narrator characterises a fictional character. In a text which is told by a 1st-person narrator, there can again be figural characterisation, i.e. when one fictional character characterises another fictional character; but there can also be narratorial characterisation, i.e. when the 1st-person narrator characterises a fictional character. You do not have to know everything to characterise someone else.

I think what is misleading is the term 'authorial characterisation', but Dr Mengel has written in his reader that he prefers the term 'narratorial characterisation' (see p. 18).

There were some questions after class, and I feel I should make two things a litte more precise:

(a) The four narrative situations we discussed (also on p. 18 in your readers), i.e. limited 3rd-person narration, unlimited 3rd-person narration, limited 1st-person narration and unlimited 1st-person narration are IDEALISED CLASSIFICATIONS, or EXTREME POLES. That is, there are innumerable forms in between, and texts in which the narrative situation changes from one stretch of text to another. Anyway, I think the point to make is that something like pamela is a rather limited first-person narration, while something like tom jones is rather an unlimited third-person narration.

(b) The specific wording or text design in the passage you've read from kew gardens (e.g., by means of pronouns etc.) FUNCTIONs in such way, as will change the perspective from a rather neutral bird's-eye-view associated with the human passers-by to the  more limited perspective of the snail. That again will FUNCTION in some way in the interpretation of the text (e.g., the similarities/dissimilarites/