Simultaneous narration: a closer look. Comments on a recent narrative phenomenon

Abstract

With this article we would like to discuss the narratological and linguistic implications of first-person, narrative fiction, which is exclusively or to a very large extent cast in the present tense. This form of narrative fiction is relatively recent and unacknowledged and known by terms such as First Person Present Tense (FPPT), or “simultaneous narration”. In an ongoing dialogue with Dorrit Cohn's work on the subject, we investigate three different points: 1) that simultaneous narration can throw light on other first-person forms, bringing to the surface hitherto unseen parallels between retrospective first-person fiction and interior monologue; 2) that simultaneous narration involves possibilities for semantic enlargement of the present now and of subjectivity, a trait that is not however specific to the fictional forms; and 3) that the uniqueness and indeed strangeness of simultaneous narration has to do with a combination of the not fiction-specific possibilities for enlargement and a fiction-specific lack of narrative situation.