Reading Novels

2. Space and Time

39 2 Space and Time A common feature of modern Western art forms is that they try to fix what they show in a particular space and time. A novel will establish a textworld in which events can be related to one another, and the people and things it concerns will be placed in some kind of setting. We can expect that this will start in the incipit, and it is appropriate to try to work out exactly how it is performed. Since we are often given place names and real times, it may seem that a novel pins down its text-world by reference to the actual world. If we read the place names “London” or “Chicago,” or the date “1960,” we feel we know where we are. But as we have seen already in relation to names, the kind of verifiable reference we associate with nonfiction has been suspended in a novel.1 Suspended references only give an impression that we can anchor and orient a narrative: they work along with internal elements of the text. Novels construct their own coherent world of time and space for their narratives from a systematic use of personal pronouns, verb tenses, adverbs, and demonstratives (this, that, these, those). These grammatical features are known to linguists as deictics. Two Basic Forms of Narration Time and space will be determined first of all by the form of narration that is taking place. As we have seen in chapter 1, some works of fiction locate the act of writing, or telling, in a particular context and push the narrative off from there. The following incipit uses this method: reading novels 40 Monday Morning Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose estate, praised be Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free time out of mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the MEMOIRS of the RACKRENT FAMILY, I think it my duty to say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself.— My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have always been known by no other than “honest Thady” afterwards, in the time of sir Murtagh, deceased, I remember to hear them calling me “old Thady”; and now I’m come to “poor Thady”; for I wear a long great coat winter and summer, which is very handy, as I never put my arms into the sleeves. . . . (Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, 1800) This text gives us a first-person narrator: the act of narrating is in the foreground, with a day and time specified, and it is put into the present tense with verbs like “I think,” “is,” “I remember.” We are told that the narrator has lived on the Rackrent estate since time out of mind, and it seems likely that is where the narration is being made. We can contrast this with the second common and basic form of narration . The incipit of Tess of the d’Urbervilles reads: On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. (Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, 1891) There is plenty of reference to places here (“Shaston,” “Marlott,” the “Vale of Blakemore”), but the position of the narrator is not mentioned, and the time and place in which the narration is being made seem to be of no consequence. What counts is the scene within the narrative, and the personal pronouns that are used relate only to the person within it. In narratives of this kind, verbs in the past tense usually dominate (“was walk- space and time 41 ing,” “gave,” “was slung”), and the temporal markers used tend to be more specific. Discours and Récit The difference outlined here is described in French as a difference between discours (as in the passage from Maria Edgeworth, where the focus is on...