Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction

330 Pages·1990·1.913 MB·English

by  Suzanne Fleischman

Tense and Narrativity
Croom Helm Romance Linguistics Series
General Editors: Martin Harris and Nigel Vincent
Titles available:
Structures and Transformations C.J.Pountain
Studies in the Romance Verb Nigel Vincent and Martin Harris
Weakening Processes in the History of Spanish Consonants R.Harris-Northall
Spanish Word Formation M.F.Lang
Tense and Text Dulcie Engel
Variation and Change in French John Green and Wendy Ayres-Bennett
Latin Syntax and Semantics Harm Pinkster
Tense and Narrativity
From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction
By Suzanne Fleischman
Routledge London
First published in the United Kingdom in 1990 by Routledge, a
division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 11 New Fetter Lane,
London EC4P 4EE.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Copyright © 1990 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-203-99383-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-04921-0 (Print Edition)
Material from Suzanne Fleischman, “Discourse Functions of Tense
Aspect Oppositions in Narrative: Toward a Theory of Grounding,”
Linguistics 23(1985):851–882, reprinted by permission of Mouton de
Gruyter. Material from Suzanne Fleischman, “Evaluation in Narrative:
The Present Tense in Medieval Performed Stories,” Yale French Studies
70, reprinted by permission of Yale French Studies. Four lines from
“Shorts I,” from W.H.Auden: Collected Poems, edited by Edward
Mendelson, published in 1976 by Faber and Faber Limited and
Random House, Inc., reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Pour Y.M.
malgré lui
Contents
Abbreviations xi
Preface xiii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Working Definitions and Operational Preliminaries 10
1.1. Tense 10
1.2. Aspect 13
1.3. Situation types 14
1.4. Grammar, discourse, and the meaning of tense-aspect categories 15
1.5. Tenses of the past system 16
1.6. Tenses of the present system 23
1.7. Tense-aspect in early Romance 28
Chapter 2. A Theory of Tense-Aspect in Narrative Based on Markedness 36
2.1. The concept of markedness 36
2.2. Markedness and tense-aspect categories in narrative 39
Chapter 3. “Ungrammatical” Tenses: Background of the Question 45
3.1. Scope of the phenomenon 45
3.2. Diegetic and mimetic discourse 46
3.3. Grammatical “freedom” of the early vernaculars 47
3.4. Tense alternation as a mark of “literary” écritures 47
3.5. Prosodic considerations 48
3.6. Aspectual hypotheses and “situation types” 49
3.7. The HISTORICAL PRESENT: The “past-more-vivid” 52
3.8. The NARRATIVE PRESENT, HISTORICAL PRESENT, and PRESENT tense 54
3.9. Participant tracking 56
vii
3.10. From oral performance to écriture: Oral residue in written texts 59
3.11. Performed stories: Medieval and modern, natural and artificial 62
Chapter 4. Narrative Discourse: Typological Considerations 66
4.1. Verbal representations of experience: Story structure and reality structure 66
4.2. Differentia specifica of narrative textuality 70
4.3. Stories, narratives, and other verbalizations of experience 72
4.4. Narrative fiction 74
4.5. Modes of discourse: “Storytelling” and “communication” 78
4.6. Linguistic marks of storytelling 82
4.7. Tense and aspect as metalinguistic signals of narrative genres 85
Chapter 5. The Linguistic Structure of Narrative 87
Part I. Temporal Structure 87
5.1. Speaker-now and story-now 87
5.2. Retrospective discourse and prospective time 89
5.3. Iconic sequence and the narrative norm 91
Part II. Text Structure 94
5.4. The global structure of narrative 94
5.5. Evaluation 100
5.6. Adapting the natural narrative model to complex narrations 108
5.7. The clausal structure of narrative 109
5.8. Conclusion 116
Chapter 6. Textual Functions 118
Part I. Grounding: The “Texture” of the Text 118
6.1. The foreground-background contrast 118
6.2. Toward a theory of grounding 129
6.3. Grounding and parataxis 130
6.4. Tense-aspect and grounding 135
6.5. Creating cohesion: The chansons de geste 137
Part II. Boundary Marking: The “Space” of the Text 140
6.6. Tense switching and the segmentation of narrative texts 140
viii
Part III. Information Blocking: The “Tempo” of the Text 144
6.7. “Co-subordinate” nexus 144
6.8. Pacing the discourse 147
Chapter 7. Expressive Functions 151
7.1. Point of view and focalization 152
7.2. The Speaker and the experiencer 156
7.3. Free indirect discourse 160
7.4. Interior monologue 164
7.5. Tense, temporality, and focalization 172
7.6. Time, tense, and memory in Proust 174
7.7. Point of view and the PERFECT 177
7.8. Tense-aspect and point of view in natural narration 181
7.9. Conclusion 182
Chapter 8. Metalinguistic Functions: Storytelling in the PRESENT 184
8.1. Epic storytelling: Narration without time 185
8.2. Romancero: The fragmenting of narrative 191
8.3. The HISTORICAL PRESENT and beyond 199
8.4. Transformations of narration in the nouveau roman 206
8.5. PRESENT-tense fiction: Where is it moving? 216
Conclusion 217
Appendix Coding Conventions 220
1.
Appendix Texts 222
2.
Notes 266
References 288
I. Texts Cited 288
II. Critical Works 290
Concept and Name Index 306
Index of Texts Cited 313
Tables
1. Markedness Oppositions for the PAST and PRESENT Tenses in Ordinary (Nonnarrative) 39
Language
2. Markedness Values for the “PRESENT Cotemporal with Now” 41
3. Tense, Memory, and Narrative Perspective 43