Temporal insights: the significance of time distortion in a narrative text

Abstract

The aim of the dissertation entitled Temporal insights: The significance of time distortion in a narrative text, is to study the effects of temporal relations within the novel and how these distortions are experienced by the reader as strategies influencing his/her understanding of and response to the text, thereby indirectly revealing the presence of the author in the design of the text. In fact, one could probably conclude that temporal structuring in narrative texts is a valuable tool deliberately or inadvertently used by the author to manipulate the reader.

Part one of the dissertation accordingly contains some observations on the role of the author and the way(s) in which the temporal deformation of a narrative text may reveal instances of authorial presence.

Part two and the main part of the dissertation is a study of how the three categories; Order, Duration and Frequency; as defined by Gérard Genette, operate within a novel. The chapter division of part two therefore correspondingly reflects three chapters, dealing with the abovementioned topics after having first introduced Genette's method of analysis. In the chapters titled Order and Duration, the novels used for purposes of illustration are Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, respectively. However, each of Genette's classifications is followed by an investigation of the effects of his categories on the reader's encounter with the novel The Lover by Marguerite Duras. In the final chapter of the discussion and illustration of these temporal categories, that of Frequency, the novel The Lover is used not only to demonstrate Genette's conclusions but also to show how the reader's experience of the text is manipulated by the effects of this category.

Part two is then followed by a conclusion, which attempts to tie together observations on the manipulation of the reader and the way(s) in which temporal distortion can be taken to reveal indications of the author's presence as this is inferable from the text.