Character POV chapter writing

[Miskatonic]

Is GRRM the first to employ this style in fantasy literature or are there older works that have used it as well?

Examples would be great.

 

[risu]

I know Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, published in 1990, used multiple POVs, some POVs having a chapter to themselves. Is that what you're asking?

The Eye of the World - A Wheel of Time Wiki - Wikia

 

[Heliotrope]

Terry Goodkind did this in the Sword of Truth series. The characters were often spread apart at different times of the journey, and he changed the POV for each chapter.

 

[Incanus]

He explicitly picked it up from Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap series from the 90's (an excellent sci-fi series). Though the pattern did not emerge until the third book in this series, it uses the chapter name as the POV character, exactly like ASoIaF. Of course, multiple POV stories have been around for as long as omniscient POV has been around. And LOTR uses multiple POVs.

 

[Vanilla]

I cannot fathom why anybody would not've thought to make multiple point of view characters for a book before George Martin, but I don't read much old stuff, so I don't know. It seems like the rational way to write, though. Didn't The Lord of the Rings have pieces from multiple view points?

 

[Ireth]

I cannot fathom why anybody would not've thought to make multiple point of view characters for a book before George Martin, but I don't read much old stuff, so I don't know. It seems like the rational way to write, though. Didn't The Lord of the Rings have pieces from multiple view points?

Kind of. After the breaking of the Fellowship, the books were divided between Frodo and Sam (and Gollum)'s half of the story and the other members of the Fellowship (mostly Aragorn). The first half was mainly the larger group, and the second half was mainly Frodo and co. But the way I interpret the OP, Miskatonic refers to having each chapter titled after the character whose POV it's from. I can't be sure, not having read any of the books mentioned, other than a few chapters of GOT.

 

[ThinkerX]

Fiests 'Rift War' saga, done back in the late 70's and early 80's did this...sort of. Events revolved around certain characters, and entire sections of each book were dedicated to those characters exploits.

 

[Ersiusp]

The first books I remember seeing split PoVs in were Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series. Chapters were split more chronologically than one for each character, but it's clearly in the same neighborhood.

 

[Mythopoet]

First one I can think of from the fantasy genre is Dracula from 1897. So, no.

 

[Caged Maiden]

All of Thieve's World was done this way, because each author wrote a chapter that was a specific character. Robert Asprin did it in his MYTH series (1978-2002), but it was only in certain books, where characters split up, and then they chose it for Thieve's World too because it was a collaborative work. I wasn't sure whether you were talking specifically about how he (GRRM) named his chapters after the character who was the POV, of just how each chapter was a specific POV.