Novels, Time in

Time in novels is based on a fundamental duality. Günther Müller, a German literature theorist, was the first who reflected thoroughly on this duality. In 1948 he introduced the opposition between erzählte Zeit (story time) and Erzählzeit (narrative time), a literary terminology that has gained international acceptance. Story time designates the chronology of the events told—that is, the time of the story—whereas narrative time means the time of the narrative presentation of the story; in other words, the time of the plot. The temporal complexities that result from the relation between story time and narrative time were studied in detail by Gérard Genette, a French literary theorist who is primarily associated with the structuralist movement. In his canonical work, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (1972), Genette proposes that time in novels may be classified in terms of order, duration, and frequency. We shall follow Genette's terminology, because it fills the need for a systematic theory of time in narrative texts.

The first main category discussed by Genette is the category of order. It designates the discrepancies between, on the one hand, the temporal order of a series of real or fictitious events connected by a certain chronology and, on the other hand, the temporal arrangement of these events in the narrative discourse. Genette pays attention to the fact that events occur in one order but are narrated in another. This discordance between the temporal succession of events in the story and their arrangement in the plot is called anachrony. Anachronical relations between story and plot are realized mostly by means of analepses and prolepses. Analepses are narrative episodes that take place earlier than the temporal point of departure of the narrative into which they are inserted. They are narrative retrospections or backflashes. The framing narrative is the first narrative, containing the analeptic sequence as the second narrative. Prolepses are temporal anticipations, narrative episodes that take place later than the temporal point of departure of the narrative, into which they are inserted. The framing narrative that contains the proleptic sequence is the first narrative, whereas the framed episode is the second narrative. Yet a careful analysis of the temporal order of narrative texts is not finished with the mere identification of analepses and prolepses, which must be further specified in respect to reach and extent. Reach designates the temporal distance of events told in the analeptic (proleptic) sequence from the moment in the story when the narrative was interrupted to make room for the anachrony. To determine the reach of analepses (prolepses) the reader must ask, “How long is the temporal distance between first and second narrative?” Extent is used to describe the duration of the story that is covered by the analeptic (proleptic) sequence. In this case the reader's question is, “How long is the period of time told in the second narrative?” In addition, analepses (prolepses) may contain further anachronies. These narrative sequences already framed by an anachronic episode are analepses (prolepses) of second degree.

Duration is the second main category discussed in Genette's Narrative Discourse. The duality of story time and narrative time allows novelists to control precisely the speed of their narratives. Duration is defined by the relation between the length of the story (measured in seconds, minutes, days, etc.) and the length of the text used to describe it (measured in lines, pages, chapters, etc.). The discrepancies between the length of the story and the length of the text are anisochronies (variations in speed). Genette determines four types of speed variations: summary, scene, pause, and ellipses.

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