| Popis: |
The identification of time as the constitutive element in the novel moves us close to a tenable poetics of the genre.' Despite our excursions into the extra-literary temporalities of sociology, history, theology, physics, philosophy, and theoretical psychology, and despite the inclination of some of us to lump the novel with other forms of prose fiction when speaking of time in literature, we are beginning to get at the generic secret that yields the peculiar pleasure of reading a novel. Much work lies ahead, however, to show us clearly how the novel takes on the form of time. Two questions in particular stand in the way: what about the apparent exceptions? and what about other forms, especially the short story, in which time seems decisively operative? When we consider the novels that seem to defy temporal control, it becomes evident that they make up the body of the anti-novelistic novel: that is, every test of the novel is a temporal test. From Sterne to Robbe-Grillet, the writers who strain the genre strain it by flouting a temporal norm. The more defiant they are, the more they call attention to the primary importance of time. Mrs. Shandy's ill-timed question-about a clock, of course-interrupts an action which, like a simple narrative, is expected to go directly forward to its conclusion. As a result |
