Time

General Considerations Time is a constituant factor of story and text, because time is a constituant factor of life

There are different temporal fields: Personal time (time of mind, memories etc.) Natural time (natural rhythms – rising and setting of sun, seasons etc.) Social/organized time (time as a public convention—we establish order so we can live together) Unidirectional vs. Organic time (is time measurable ? Linear? Or does it follow a different pattern?)

The study of time in a text allows us to take a closer look at the representation of time The “melting clocks” of the surrealist painter, Salvador Dali : The Persistence of Memory (1931), often called just "Clocks" and widely regarded as a Surrealist masterpiece.

Study of time Consider distinction story time vs. text time Story time Story time = chronology of events in the story. The sequence of events and the length of time that passes in the story. Text time Text time = the way these events are organized in the text (often different from story time).

Pseudo-temporality Consider that both story time and text time consist in a pseudo-temporality, a reconstruction of time that cannot be faithful to real time The effects are often a source of meaning in the text

Consider that the text is read in a linear fashion. Often it does not follow a chronological succession of story events We have developed terms to describe the discordances/problems that arise as a result

1. Order Order = relationship between succession of events in story and organization of story elements in text

Analepsis after Analepsis (narration of story event at a point in the text after later events have been told—like a flashback often related to memory after form of anachronism by which some of the events of a story are related at a point in the narrative after later story-events have already been recounted. Commonly referred to as retrospection or flashback, analepsis enables a storyteller to fill in background information about characters and events.

Prolepsis before Prolepsis (narration of story event at a point in the text before earlier events have been told (like a prediction) Suspense created not by wondering what will happen but instead how it will happen The anachronistic representation of something as existing before its proper or historical time, as in the pre-colonial United States. The assignment of something, such as an event or name, to a time that precedes it, as in ex. “If you tell the cops, you're a dead man”.

2. Duration The duration of time for a story event to take place Virtually impossible for duration of story event to correspond to text event Look at amount of text devoted to an event. If large amount of text, indicates story event is important

Acceleration– short amount of text for long period of time Deceleration – large amount of text for shot periods of time

Fastest to slowest: Ellipsis —story event not mentioned Summary —story event passed over in a few lines Dialogue —story time = text time Scene – story time = text time Descriptive pause (story time stops)

Again….consider decelerations as an indicator of importance – often the most important events or conversations are given in detail whereas less important ones are compressed

3. Frequency Relation between number of times event appears in story and number of times it is narrated Singulative Singulative (most common – telling once what happened once) Repetitive Repetitive (telling many times what happened once :often telling about the same event from different perspectives— like a car accident witnessed by many people ) Iterative Iterative (telling once what ‘happened’ n times) (often something that habitually happened is told once)