JOSE ANGEL GARCIA LANDA
3. Time structure in the story.
(Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse)
3.1. The Generation of Story Time
3.6. Time and Status of the Narrating
3.1. The Generation of Story Time
Literature is, like
music or cinema, a sequential form of art; a literary work, just like any other
linguistic product, unfolds itself in time. Language exists in time, but its mission is to represent, to
signify. And among things which
can be represented we find time itself.
A text, unfolding itself in time, can at the same time represent
time. Texts do not have to be
narratives in order to do this.
The tense system of any language is designed for the representation of
time in any kind of text, narrative or other. We might argue that from the moment we find a represented
time in a text we are identifying if not an actual narrative at least a
narrative trait or structure. But
we come closer to the spirit of narrative temporality proper when we define it
as the use of the time of the representation as an icon of the represented
time. By virtue of this mapping of
one time into the other, the textual time becomes a representational time, and
the fabula time becomes a represented time. Things might stop there, and the two temporal sequences would
overlap in a perfectly homogeneous way.
But we must remember that fabula time is also represented semantically
by means of the linguistic signs of the text, not merely iconically through the
linguistic chain. The mapping of
fabula time into textual time is governed by the semantics of the text, to the
extent that, far from coterminous homogeneity being the rule, no two texts present the same temporal
formula. The interplay of
iconicity and semantized time ensures that the represented temporality is
distorted in a manifold of ways and degrees. What we experience in a narrative text is therefore not the
fabula time as such, but a represented fabula time, what we call the story
time.
In
principle, therefore, narratives move forward, in an indexical way which
signals the passage of time. But
this is only the general rule, and they may suddenly jump back, against the
direction of temporal progression.
They may also jump forward, interrupting their normal pace, or move in a
variety of speeds in one direction or another, compressing or expanding the
narrated time.
We
are going to study presently the peculiar temporality of the story, which is
the result of articulating the temporality of the fabula on the different
temporal sequence of the discourse.
In doing so, therefore, we shall presuppose those structures which are
peculiar to fabula and discourse time, and which underpin the structure of
story time. The story time is the
result of the interplay of fabula time with another temporal sequence, the
textual time of the linguistic chain.
It is very frequent to meet descriptions of narrative time which assume
only two temporal threads.[1]
Either the fabula time as a necessary referent or the duration of the
enunciative act get lost somewhere in the description. We must assume on the contrary that each
of the levels of analysis we distinguish can generate a temporality of its own:
for instance, it makes no sense to speak of the "temporality of
enunciation" as if enunciation were a simple, univocal phenomenon. The complexity of the temporality of enunciation
will mirror the complexity of the enunciation itself, the interplay of the
author's and the narrator's voices.
If the basic scheme of fabula, story and narrative is complicated in any
way, if, for instance, any of the levels duplicates itself, the temporal
structure of the narrative will become proportionally more complex.
3.2. Fabula Time
Fabula time is
pluridimensional, since a fabula is not a thin narrative line but a volume of
relationships progressing in time.
But a story presupposes the encoding of those events in a semiotic
thread of signs. Simultaneity
therefore will have to be rendered implicitly or through sequentiality. Study of story time can be described as
study of how a pluridimensional phenomenon has been mapped on a limited
semiotic system; or, conversely, of how a linear and sequential text manages to
construct, to represent, the fulness of a lived temporality.
Fabula
time may exist in two main forms: objective ("real" time) and
subjective time.
Subjective time is the representation of time in the minds of the
characters in the fabula. It is
therefore an element of the fictive world, just as the characters themselves,
but it is already subject to distortion and patterning (let us remind here
Bergson's concept of durée).
Subjective time may already be considered a transitional form towards
story time, which is also a represented time. Subjective time is not represented in language (at least not
exclusively), but it is nonetheless a semiotic phenomenon to the extent that
time and identity are subjective phenomena. It is of course this inherent semiotization of fabula time
which makes it amenable to representation as a story. The characters (or people) can be thought of as being
subject to brute, shapeless temporality, but in fact they live their experience
of time in a form much closer to an ordered narrative, with significant
connections between the events of their lives, anticipations, memories and
projects. Subjective time is in
one sense a simplification and in another sense a complication of real fabula
time. Subjective time, like
narrative, involves to some extent a linearization of the multidimensional
fabula time. Consciousness can
oscillate between several threads of thought, but it can hardly encompass all
aspects of reality. It is
therefore only natural that subjective time, like the subjective realm of
experience as a whole, should be used as a partially elaborated material in the
construction of a story; it is used to motivate narrative structures at this
level. But subjective time also
complicates narrative temporality in that it disrupts the uniformity of its
direction: flashbacks and flashforwards are a feature of memory work before
they become a feature of narrative.
Characters may likewise construct fictional temporal sequences through
their wishes, dreams, tales, etc.
A story may use all of these without giving the narrator the direct
responsibility for any of them, since they are in a sense ready-made, a part of
the fabula. Of course they are
only significant for analysis due to the fact that they are a part of the
story as well, but it is useful to
distinguish these features from those which are introduced at story level,
since they give rise to different narrative structures.
3.3.
Story time: Order
Genette divides the
temporal relationships between fabula and story into three types:
we will study relations between the time of the story and the (pseudo-) time of the narrative according to what seem to me to be three essential determinations: connections between the temporal order of succession of the events in the story and the pseudo-temporal order of their arrangement in the narrative . . . ; connections between the variable duration of these events or story sections and the pseudo-duration (in fact, length of text) of their telling in the narrative--connections, thus, of speed . . . ; finally, connections of frequency, that is . . . relations between the repetitive capacities of the story and those of the narrative. (Narrative Discourse 35)
Let's concentrate for
the moment on order. The
natural order of events in the fabula is chronological. The story can distort the order of the
events in various ways. Those
distortions are called anachronies.
Anachronies have always been common in literature. In fact, Aristotle seems to have been
the first one to make a remark on this phenomenon, when he compares the
temporal structure of the tragedy and the epic:
In tragedy we cannot imitate several lines of actions carried on at one and the same time; we must confine ourselves to the action on the stage and the part taken by the players. But in epic poetry, owing to the narrative form, many events simultaneously transacted can be presented (Poetics 63, XXIV.4)
Of course this feature
is not a necessity, but a convention of the Greek stage. However, it does suggest that
linguistic narrative easily yields to temporal distortions, and that the time
scheme of a novel will usually be more complex than that of a play (or a
film).
The
most famous classical reference to this issue, however, is usually assumed to
be Horace's differentiation between narration in medias res and narration ab ovo. These terms are introduced in a
paragraph discussing the problem of how to give a well-known subject a
brilliant treatment, or, more to the point, of how to turn a traditional fabula
into an artistic story. Horace,
following Aristotelian suggestions, sets Homer's practice as an example:
He does not begin a "Return of Diomede" from the death of Meleager, nor the war of Troy from the twin eggs [gemino ab ovo ]. He ever hastens to the issue, and hurries his hearers into the midst of the story [in medias res ], just as if they knew it before; and what he thinks his touch will not turn to gold, that he lets alone. (Art of Poetry 70, lines 146-50)
Usually these terms
are used in a different way nowadays.
While Horace seems to imply that preliminaries can be dispensed with, we
usually understand that a story begun in medias res will retake the lost expositional events by means of an
anachrony, a flashback.
So,
there are two basic story orders: the simple, unmarked order of chronological
succession of events, and the complex order that includes some kind of temporal
distortion. This was also the
assumption of medieval rhetoric.
Pushed
to the extreme, the first variety of narrative order keeps the reader
completely informed of the progress of the fabula: there is no need of coming
back to retake some unexplained event; everything has been told and therefore
the attention of the reader is riveted on the future, not on the past. The peculiar emotion produced by this
kind of straightforward narrative is suspense: the reader wonders what will happen, and the whole of his interpretive
attention is projected to the future.
The model for this kind of narrative is perhaps the adventure story: war
tales, westerns, science-fiction, children's tales...
If
we push the second variety of narrative ordering to its logical conclusion, we
find that here the logic is double: as in straightforward narrative, we wonder
what will happen next, but, since important facts are being concealed from us
for the moment, we also wonder what has happened. That is, curiosity is the reader's main passion here, or curiosity combined
with suspense. We wonder about the
nature of the past in order to explain the present, but we also wonder about
the way in which the past will be revealed, the revelation of its full hold on
the present. The prototype for
this kind of story is the detective story, which unfolds simultaneously toward
the origin and toward the conclusion of the fabula.
This
second kind of story can't be content with a simple, one-way progression into
the future. It needs to come back on
itself, and finish what was left unfinished, tell us the mystery which has been
hidden all through the story. A
temporal distortion is needed, the most basic one, a return to the past which
will enable us to understand the present.
It is now time to refine the concept of anachrony. The study anachronies was undertaken by
German and Russian Formalists (Friedemann, Tomashevski). The most complete system is expounded
by Genette.
We
have defined an anachrony as a temporal distortion between the time pattern of
the story and the time pattern of the fabula. There are two kinds of anachronies: an anachronical event
may belong either to the past or to the future with respect to the events which
form its immediate context. We
call the first type analepsis
or flashbacks; the second type is prolepsis or flashforwards. It is important to realize that these
distortions have to be apprehended at some point as we move through the
story. We cannot define the
temporality of the story as a simple formal scheme: time must enter the
description. From the moment the
reader constructs a coherent series of events he has a temporal orientation and
a "now" moment; any anachrony will be perceived to be a flashback or
a flashforward with respect to that moving present. It is important to realize the nature of this definition:
anachronies are not measured with respect to the time of the enunciation (as,
for instance, verbal tenses) but with respect to a narrative reference point
created by the ordered unfolding of events. Genette calls that unfolding of events the "first
narrative". His definition is
"the temporal level of narrative with respect to which anachrony is
defined as such" (ND
48). It goes without saying
that the relative coherence of the first narrative will reinforce the
subordinate character of the anachronies.
If no coherent first narrative is formed (as in Molly Bloom's monologue)
there results a temporal constellation in which every element is defined and
defines the others in equal measure.
Most
elements in the fabula have a simple temporality, being merely signified
events. But some of the fabula
elements (objects or events) are signs, and as such may have a double
temporality: the temporality of the signifier and the temporality of the signified. Therefore, the temporal status of these
elements will have to be described at two levels of signification: the standard
semiotic level of the story and the signified semiotic level of their referent. For instance, an epic narrative may
suddenly give way to a description of past events which are depicted in a
present work of art portrayed by the narrator (e.g. Aeneas looking at paintings
of the destruction of Troy in Dido's castle). Or a character may reminisce through a story: the telling of
the story, the story-as-sign, is located in the present; but the events
depicted in the story take us to the past. There is no anachrony in one sense, since the present goes
unfolding itself. But there is an
anachrony in a sense, since we learn about the past or the future.
That
is, "real" anachronies can be introduced by the narrator, but they
are not the only possible ones.
There are also anachronies present in fabula elements (speeches,
stories, works of art, memories) which are capable of signifying a temporal
moment. Genette speaks of
objective versus subjective anachronies (47), but the opposition remains
undeveloped. Moreover, the terms
seem to refer only to anachronies introduced by speech or psychical
processes. Maybe it is better to
speak of fabula anachronies as opposed to story anachronies. In the last chapter of Ulysses, which
contains Molly Bloom's interior monologue, there are no story anachronies: the
rhythm and sequence of the mode of presentation, a sequence of thoughts, are
uninterrupted. But there is a
complex anachronical structure in the contents of those thoughts. This ability anachronies have to
contain other anachrnonies inside them can greatly complicate the temporal
articulations of the story. A
prolepsis can contain a second-degree analepsis which contains a third-degree
prolepis, and so on.
Both
prolepses and analepses can be external or internal (with respect to the
beginning and end points of the main story) and have two relevant dimensions:
reach and extent. They may also be
homodiegetic or heterodiegetic, that is, dealing or not dealing with a fabula
line which is narrated earlier or later in the main story. Internal homodiegetic analepses are
used to recapture previous fabula material. They may add something new or just repeat previous
information. Repeating analepses,
or recalls, tie the narrative to
its own past and, if they do not add to the narrative information, can be an
important principle of stylistic construction. Completive analepses, or returns, "fill in, after the event, an earlier gap in the
narrative" (ND 51).
This play of creation and filling in of gaps contributes to create a
specific kind of narrative interest.
We
have mentioned two prototypical kinds of story, depending on whether they follow
the logic of succession or the logic of retrieval and completion of
information; the adventure story and the mystery story. Since we define these two kinds of
story with respect to the kind of expectation they arouse in the reader, it is
obvious that a formal description of a story has to take into account the
temporal development of the story: a story is not only what it 'really' is, but
also what the reader thinks it is when it is being read. A suspense story might reveal itself in
the end as a mystery story, and it is this succession of expectations in the
reader which provides an adequate account of its form.
A
mystery story necessitates that the reader ignore part of the fabula. This can be achieved in various
ways. The story can begin in medias
res, and the delayed exposition
appears gradually later on. These
stories are born with a mystery in them.
However, the mystery may develop during the unfolding of the story. It consists then in a control of the
information available to the reader.
A mystery can be described as a gap in our knowledge of the story
(Sternberg 238 ss). A mystery
story is therefore a system of creation and resolution of informational
gaps. Gaps can be divided into
permanent (unsolved mysteries) or provisional. The nature of gaps can usually be determined objectively,
but the analyst must take into account the impression of the reader: a gap
which normally belongs to the class of provisional gaps can sometimes be left
open forever (cf. John Fowles's story "The Enigma", in The Ebony
Tower). So, we can
establish an opposition between provisional and permanent gaps. On the other hand, we can take into
account the reader's perspective in order to distinguish (with Sternberg 244f)
between curiosity gaps, those
which are recognized immediately, and surprise gaps, informational restrictions which only reveal themselves in
their full extent from a later perspective. These may be related to Genette's paralipsis, an information which suddenly reveals
itself to have been skipped while it should have been available under the
existing mode of presentation (ND
52).
Actually,
the two kinds of narrative are extremes, and most narratives combine both kinds
of interest. And that is because,
from its very definition, narrative has two main movements; it looks both to
the immediate future, following the logic of succession, and towards some point
in the past, following the logic of repetition--any narrative is in a sense a
repetition of the events it tells.
Prolepses
are less frequent than analepses, although they are perfectly coherent while we
remain in retrospective narrative.
But when they are present they also contribute to the structure of
expectation, curiosity and suspense, to the activity of gap-filling and construction
of coherence which is the task of the reader of narrative. Sometimes an otherwise straightforward
narrative may include prolepses which accentuate the feeling of curiosity: how
shall we reach the stage adumbrated by the prolepsis? A novel with a complex temporality such as Salman Rushdie's
Midnight's Children makes a
constant use of this kind of curiosity-goading prolepsis.
Narrative
is a transformation not only of the fabula material, but also of the reader's
impressions; both returns and recalls help effect this transformation. It is important to note that the
difference between recall and return is not a clear-cut one. New aspects of a phenomenon may appear
in a later recall; the same event may be modulated in a different way through
the attitudes of the narrator or the characters (this is clear from Genette's
examples, e.g. ND 58). Here as elsewhere, the concepts we
introduced should be used as measuring rods rather than pigeon-holes.
1.3.4. Story Time:
Duration
Narrative duration or
speed is defined by Genette as "the connections between the variable
duration of these events or story sections and the pseudo-duration (in fact,
length of text) of their telling in the narrative" (ND 35). This definition disregards, as
Genette's model does as a rule, the complexity of discourse structures. At textual level, time may be
fictionalised; the telling of the story may be a story in itself, and the time
of the fabula may be measured with respect to this fictional time which
surrounds the act of narration.
Genette's "narrative time" is ambiguous: it may refer both to
the idealised reading time or to the represented time in which the narrative
discourse unfolds. As this
fictional time may have its variations of order, duration and aspect, the
formula for story duration may be extremely complex. This only means that time can be subjected in narrative to
an infinite modulation. But while
a small amount of experimental narratives seek to explore the complexities
which underlie the representation of time, most narratives yield themselves to
analysis using Genette's system of story durations.
The
speed of the narrative consists in the relationship between equivalences
between the duration of the fabula and the idealized duration of the reading
process. The ideal coincidence at
all points between the speed of the fabula and that of the narrative is what
Genette calls an isochronous narrative, and then declares to be a chimaera. But isochronous narrative, narrative
without variations of rhythm, is perfectly possible. Simultaneous reporting of sports is a non-literary instance;
the interior monologue is a literary one.
But it is more usual to find narratives with variations of speed or
anisochronies. Anisochronies
will involve a passage from summary to ellipsis, from scene to
description. These are the four
basic movements described by Genette:
We could schematize
the temporal values of these four movements fairly well with the following
formulas, with ST
designating story [fabula] time and NT the pseudo-time, or conventional time, of the narrative:
pause:
NT = n, ST = 0. Thus:
NT >ST
scene:
NT =
ST
summary:
NT < ST
ellipsis:
NT = 0, ST = n.
Thus: NT < ST.
The formulae seem to
fit neatly. Only, according to our
definition, these movements would be movements of the narrative text and not of the story proper, and this
brings along a number of conceptual modifications.
First
of all, concerning pauses. The
story is the transmission of the fabula; when there is no fabula being
constructed, as in a digressive pause, there is no story, while there is still
a narrative text--narrative, because the materials woven into it, story and
digression, are organically linked into a communicative act which is mainly
narrative. There are, of course,
descriptive pauses which are narrative insofar as the elements described are a
part of the narrated world. There
are also narrative pauses, which are caused by the interruption of one story
line by another.
With
respect to scenes, we should note
that the identity between the time of reception and the fabula time rendered in
the scene is hypothetical, a constructed convention. The two temporalities are rarely to be measured by the
clock. This would seem to
contradict the very definition of scene.
In a scene, the duration of the time of reception should in principle be
used iconically to signify the duration of fabula time. And it is so, with the proviso that
iconicity is also a constructed relationship of signification. It may use more "natural"
elements of the signified, but it articulates them in an arbitrary structure,
just like symbolism. This is why
we usually get so many "accelerated" scenes, most noticeably in
dramatic or filmic narrative, without any breach of verisimilitude. Generic conventions determine the
latitude which can be given to this supposed identity between represented time
and representational time.
Be
as it may, scenic narrative requires a presentation without noticeable gaps,
one which provides a kind of immersion into the fictive world, at maximum
distance from narrative mediation (and, therefore, from both authorial
digressions and from omniscient summary).
This maximum distance from the narrative presence can be effected mainly
by two means: immersion in the characters' verbal world and immersion in the
character's unspoken perception of the narrated world. In the first case, we get a dramatized
dialogue with a minimum of narrative indications, which usually involves external presentation of the
characters. In the second, the
scene is filtered through the consciousness of a character, a focalizer, and
the impression of scenic time is created through the sequence of his narrated
perceptions, thoughts and emotions.
Scene
is one of the basic movements of novelistic narrative. This consists most frequently in an
alternance of scene and summary, with the first scene marking the beginning of
the first narrative and creating a reference point for the reader (Sternberg
8). Summary was used traditionally as a starter
(for instance, in Jane Austen) but its place is more and more restricted in
more recent narrative, which tends to do away with transitions between scenes.
Summary is used whenever happennings are
filtered through an interpretive mind, be it the narrator's or the character's
(for instance, in a subjective analepsis). Summary is usually the "marginal" element of
narrative, the necessary scaffolding which will set the stage for the subsequent
scene. Therefore, it will rarely
contain the bound motifs of a fabula; its function is orientative with respect
to the reader.
Ellipsis would seem to be a problematic
concept, since the fabula only exists through its rendering in the story, and
ellipsis is defined as that part of the fabula which is omitted in the
story. The definition of ellipsis
needs, therefore, a different kind of knowledge to justify its presence, and
this is usually the result of the literary competence of the reader and the predictability
of fabula patterns, apart from the more general scenarios which govern our
everyday behaviour. Our concept of
ellipsis should take these phenomena into account. Story schemata both organize the pattern of presence and
ellipsis and guide the reader in determining which ellipses are significant
and which are caused by redundant information. Ellipsis is therefore connected to the driving principle of
the narrative, the narrative design which shapes relevance and interest, the
plot. So many ellipses are mere
time gaps which are used to give shape to this plot, to emphasize causal over
temporal connection by modelling the temporal sequence on the model of the
causal one. A relevant ellipsis,
on the other hand, is a narrative gap which is flaunted in some way as
significant, through explicit comment or through the break it causes in fabula
sequence which we interpret through a well-known intertextual model. Usually the gap will be filled later on
through the use of anachrony.
Genette
divides ellipses from a formal point of view into explicit, implicit, and
hypothetical. According to a
temporal criterion into definite and indefinite. Usually the the definiteness of the ellipsis is not explicit,
and is left to the inference of the reader.
3.5. Story Time: Aspect
The order of events is
not only temporal, but also causal.
That is, temporality by itself is not the only explanation for the
effects of sequentiality and order which a story provokes in the reader. Sequences of events can form wholes
which are temporally disrupted but causally connected.
Therefore,
we shall use the term aspect,
inspired on the verbal category, to refer to a temporal perspective
grounded on the nature of the action sequence itself and of its causal
connection to other elements of the fabula. Genette notes the grammatical relationship (ND 113) but disregards aspectual
distinctions other than those of frequency.[2]
The triangle singulative /
repetitive / iterative is only one
possible aspectual structure. Grammarians
have introduced other aspectual distinctions. To the dimension of frequency (singulative / repetitive /
iterative aspects), we might add the dimensions of unfolding (inchoative /
progressive / terminative / perfective aspects) and inherent duration (punctual
/ durative / permanent aspects).
3.5.1. Frequency
Genette defines
frequency as the relationship between the repetitive capacities of the fabula
and those of the story. As we
noted in our first section, the notion of repetition depends on identity, and
this is an operative concept.
Repeated elements are being considered insofar as they are alike; this
does not mean that there are no differences between them (cf. Genette 145f). Genette speaks of three types of
frequency: singulative, which
involves a one-to one relationship between fabula events and their rendering in
the story; repetitive, when the
same event in the fabula is narrated a number of times (for instance, from a
variety of perspectives), and iterative,
when the story gathers into a common mention a number of similar
occurrences in the story.
Proustian narrative, according to Genette, is dominated by
iterativity. Bal (Narratologie 129f) notes the possibility of yet
another movement, half-way between the singulative and the iterative, when the
story narrates a number of times an event which is itself repetitive in the
fabula.
3.5.2. Unfolding
This is an aspectual
category which requires an referential point from which the degree of unfolding
is measured. The moment of
enunciation is a central point of deictic orientation in narrative texts. There are, however, other possible
"now"-points which can act as a reference, such as the
spatial/temporal position of the focalizer, and that of the characters as
well. Both are logically
subordinated to the enunciative now-point. Their use as reference points is therefore not a necessity
but a rhetorical figure. An action
which is finished from the point of view of the narrator can be presented in
the course of its development if we adopt the perspective of the
focalizer. An event may be
perfective for the focalizer, progressive for a character.
Genette's
study of snares and false snares (ND
77), based as it is on the standardized nature of fabula materials and of
the causal sequence between them, could easily fall under the heading of
aspectual unfolding. Also, stress
may fall either on the inception or on the conclusion of action sequences, or
of the fabula itself. If a
narrative shows a marked preference for the suggestiveness of sequential
inceptions, we may call its aspect inchoative; if it prefers to begin in medias
res and place stress on endings,
its aspect will be terminative.
3.5.3. Inherent Duration
As a category of
verbal aspect, duration is implicit in the verb itself. Or maybe we should say it is a form of
predication. We can use the
classifications of forms of predication at sentence level as a reference point
for the study of the inherent duration of narrative events.[3]
Predications
Properties Situations
States Occurrences / actions
Processes / activities events / performances
Developments / Accomplishments Punctual ocurrences /Achievements
Each
predication in the story refers to a state of affairs in the fabula. A specific segment of the story will
refer to a state of affairs which will be more or less durative or
transitory--a character trait, a mood, a sudden event. The representation of punctual
occurrences is closest to the mimetic illusion of coincidence between action
and discourse, while more durative fabula traits will require a variety of
techniques if their permanence or rhythm is to be given a role in the
narrative. The aspectuality of fabula
events is potential and manifold, and the story may favour certain aspects,
certain types of development, which will constitute the actualized aspectuality
of the story.
3.6. Time and Status of the Narrating
Up to now we have been
discussing the temporality of the story, which is a set of structural
relationships between the fabula and its representation in a text. But a text is something which is
produced, enunciated, at some moment in time. An ordinary speaker always speaks in a specific space and
time, and these can leave a trace in the discourse. Spatial reference leaves its traces in the adverbs and
deictics of the narrative--in general, in its way of constructing and naming
location, space, distance. It
would merit separate study, but here we will concentrate ourselves on discourse
time.
Genette's
temporal analysis of the narrative act is suggestive, but it goes a bit too
fast. Before we classify the
temporal situation of the narrator and the fabula, we should determine whether
such a relationship exists.
Everything may seem to exist in time, so the existence of a temporal
relationship between the fabula and the narration would seem to be a necessary
one. But as a matter of fact there
is a whole realm which escapes this condition: fiction. Fiction exists in time,
but in its own time, in quite another time and place whose relationship with
our real world cannot be measured by the clock. Literature, narrative literature, is not all fictional, but
it is mostly so. It is in fiction
that literature finds the ideal conditions for its expansion and proliferation,
since a fictional world is par excellence a self-contained entity which
requires attention for its own sake--just as in literature the text requires
attention for its intrinsic interest.
In fictional
narrative not only the events may be invented: the narrating of those events
may be a fiction, too. This is
fine for the study of the time of the narrating. The problems begin when the narrating is not a fiction: how
should we measure then the time between fiction and nonfiction? It is clear that there is an operation
previous to the classification of narrative temporality: it is the
determination of narrative status,
that is, of the ontological relationship between the narrative and the
fabula. Genette's distinction between
homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narratives does not really cover this question
of status, since it refers only to the narrator's involvement in the
action. An heterodietic narrator
need not always tell a fictive tale (cf. the use of the term heterodiegetic in
ND 50, where it clearly
refers to causal connection in a line of action, not to ontological level).
There
are three main relationships in this respect: fictionality, nonfictionality,
and indeterminacy. The status of the
narrative must be distinguished from the status of the work itself (fiction or
nonfiction). A nonfictional work
may use narratives of fictional status, and vice versa.
Temporal
relationships proper only exist in a nonfictional narrative (caution: not in a
nonfictional work). There we
may rely on Genette's scheme.
Nonfictional narratives are (paradoxically) those in which the narrator
is clearly fictional. The
narrative may then be motivated through some textual-producing device: a diary,
a report, letter-writing, etc.
Indeterminate
and fictional narratives may make use of the same modes and strategies, but
they assume here a different role; they become a mere tool, a constructive
principle whose referential structure to the narrated world may be far more
complex. Usually, however, they
make use of the simplest of temporal devices: verbs in the past tense. Since the indication of time is
inscribed in the form of language itself, since the narrative cannot avoid
using tenses, it uses a petrified form which is the most neutral one from a
narrative point of view; narrative is a recreation of the past, and fictional
narrative uses this general form as a convenient vehicle, a ready-made
structure whose meaning is not really temporal.[4]
We can distinguish at least two temporal dimensions: situation and
duration. These may remind us of
the temporal distortions we have mentioned before when speaking of story time,
order and duration. But there is
an important difference: order and duration in story time were measured with
respect to a now-point determined by the immediate context of the
narrative. The temporal dimensions
of the narration are measured with respect to another reference point: the
moment of enunciation.
All
this refers to the self-representation of the act of narration. There is of course a further temporal
dimension which is far more significant from a critical point of view: the
situation in time, in the interpretive tradition, of the author, the text and
the reader. We disregard this
dimension here because it is not a specifically narrative one: this does not
mean that a critical analysis of a narrative text should ignore it.
3.6.1. Situation
Situation refers in
Genette's theory to the relative position in time of the narrator and his act
of narration vis-à-vis the events of the fabula. Genette distinguishes four possible types: prior narrating,
simultaneous narrating, subsequent narrating, and a mixed type, interpolated
narrating.
Subsequent
narration is the most frequent one (though we should always study to what
extent the temporality of the narrative past is really functional). Just as the use of the past does not
imply subsequent narrative, the use of the present tense should not be confused
with simultaneous narrative. The
historical present used for the sake of immediacy is quite common in subsequent
narrative.
There are other
significant relationships of situation, because the fabula events and the
moment of narrating are not the only possible reference points. Other possible reference points can be
the moment of fictional reception, the date of reading (insofar as it is
foreseen by the text), the date of writing. A variety of temporal patterns are established as we measure
narratives with these axes. For
instance, science fiction is usually set in the future of both writing and
reading time, but it rarely uses anterior narration: the fictive enunciation is
therefore either neutralized or set in a more or less concrete moment in a
subsequent future.
3.6.2. Duration
Narrating takes some time,
and the narrative discourse may thematize this duration. As Genette notes, this does not happen
very often. The use a
narrative makes of its duration is obviously related to a great extent to the
artifice it uses for its motivation: a diary, a report suggest different kinds
of durative distribution.
.