The Concept of Time and Literary Criticism

Abstract

According to the common (‘realist’) view of time, time is a homogeneous medium that exists in itself independently of anything that might occur “in” time. Major difficulties in the literary criticism that concerns itself with time in literature may be ascribed to this common view. Since this ‘realist’ time is independent of anything that occurs “in” it, nothing can be proved about time, and, consequently, anything can be asserted about it. Even so, time ‘realists’ think everything happens “in” time, and this allows time to be the pivot in at least two persuasive ideological mechanisms (i.e. mechanisms that turn human values into indisputable facts). However, these mechanisms can only be brought to light by means of another view of time, e.g. a ‘relational’ view according to which time is the generalized before‐and‐after relationship between phenomena. The outlines of a sounder critical practice are drawn from this view and from the four ‘present moments’ in literature, i.e. the ‘present moments’ of the writer, the narrator, the characters, and the reader.