CM 2 et 3

CM, littérature du monde anglophone, séances 2 et 3 :

“Time and space in fiction”


I- Time
* Signifier, signified, referent
The signifier: has a material existence, both visible (a written trace upon a page) and audible (sound). The signifier is present, palpable.
The signified: it is the concept / thought/ impression that corresponds to the signifier; it is therefore abstract; it is a mental image. In this sense, it is immaterial, impalpable.
The referent is the object referred to by the sign, the objective reality referred to

1. narrated time (ou « le temps de la chose racontée » ou « temps du signifié », Metz),
corresponds to the length of time covered by the story.

Rimmon-Kenan:
Story designates the narrated events, abstracted from their disposition in the text and reconstructed in their chronological order, together with the participants in these events. Whereas “story” is a succession of events, “text” is a spoken or written discourse which undertake s their telling. (3)

2. narrative time (“Le temps du récit” ou “temps du signifiant”, Metz in Figures III, p. 77).

Real time is irreversible, chronological (diachrony),
Fictional time is reversible, circular (synchrony),

a) Order
The narrator uses what we call “anachronies” (from anachronism), that is to say,

Any chunk of text that is told at a point which is earlier or later than its natural or logical position in the event sequence. (M. J. Toolan, Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction, London, Routledge, 1988.)

Analepsis and prolepsis (“flashback” and “flashforward”).


b) Frequency
In narratology, frequency designates,

The number of times a specific event occurs in a story in relation to the number of times it is narrated. (Cohan and Shires, Telling Stories, London, Routledge, 1988.)

4 possibilities:
1. An event happened once, and it is narrated once.
2. An event happened once, and it is narrated many times.
3. An event happened more than once, and it is narrated once.
4. An event happened more than once and it is narrated several times.

c) Duration“The time during which something continues” (OED).
* the number of lines, paragraphs, devoted to an event.
* the pace of the narrative,
* the different narrative techniques used to accelerate and decelerate. (The maximum acceleration of the pace of the narrative is ellipsis, the maximum deceleration, i.e., the increase in speed, is what we call pause).


II- Space

1. Setting
“The general locale /environment in which action occurs” (Abrams 172)

“setting refers to more than a specific space. It refers to the total environment for your story, with all its cultural shadings as well as its physical landmarks and characteristics…” (The Creative Writer's Handbook)

It can have a referential function, i.e., might “contribute to a greater illusion of reality, a greater verisimilitude.”

Space markers: geography, space directions, toponymy, street names...
Mimetic purposes : the stress is laid on what is unique about a particular setting.
Didactic purposes: the setting is more stereotyped and representative of a whole series of similar places.


* Setting and symbolical relevance

- Confinement
- a murky atmosphere
- darkness and silence
- the womb and the tomb

* Setting and characters


* Setting and scene

Fantasy
- A production of the human imagination which stages a human subject in the position of seeing/being seen by an object : the skull’s hollow eyes, sth unbearable.
- Requires a surface for projection : a stage, the pages of a book, a TV/video screen, the mind’s eye, a canvas, etc… : some mirror/screening device in which one reflects oneself doing this and that, constructing a « heroic fantasy » for oneself…
- Fundamentally, the screen (of the mind) is a mirror for identifications.