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Time and Narrative: Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s Tynset and Masante
Author(s) -
Long J. J.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0483.00146
Subject(s) - narrative , temporality , narrative network , narrative criticism , reading (process) , consciousness , narrative structure , repetition (rhetorical device) , literature , linguistics , epistemology , history , narrative history , philosophy , art
The existing criticism of Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s Tynset and Masante has categorised the narrative form of the texts as either ‘musical’, ‘spatial’, or ‘stream‐of‐consciousness’. All three approaches, however, fail to take account of the inescapably temporal nature of narrative. This article begins by examining the thematics of temporality in Tynset and Masante. Implicit in both is a conception of time as cyclicality within linearity, the former being represented by the liturgical calendar, the latter by clock time and the imagery of entropy. The narrative techniques of the texts are then analysed to show how they encourage linear, end‐directed reading whilst simultaneously impeding linear reading by means of extensive repetition. Finally, it is shown that the dynamics of narrative form provide a way of both acknowledging and combating the entropy inherent not only in the represented world, but also in the narrative enterprise itself.