"This book brings together a model of time and a model of language to generate a new model of narrative, where different stories with different temporalities and non-chronological modes of sequence can tell of different worlds of human - and non-human - experience, woven together (the 'texture of time') in the one narrative. The work of Gerald Edelman on consciousness, J.T. Fraser on time, and M.A.K. Halliday on language is introduced; the categories of systemic functional linguistics are used for detailed analysis of English narrative texts from different literary periods. A summary chapter gives an overview of previous narrative studies and theories, with extensive references. Chapters on 'temporalization' and 'spatialization' of language contrast the importance of time in narrative texts with the effect of 'grammatical metaphor', as described by M.A.K. Halliday, for scientific discourse. Chapters on prose fiction, poetry and the texts of digital culture chart changes in the 'texture of time' with changes in the social context: 'narrative as social semiotic'"--
This book brings together a model of time and a model of language to generate a new model of narrative, where different stories with different temporalities and non-chronological modes of sequence can tell of different worlds of human and non-human experience, woven together (the texture of time) in the one narrative. The work of Gerald Edelman on consciousness, J.T. Fraser on time, and M.A.K. Halliday on language is introduced; the categories of systemic functional linguistics are used for detailed analysis of English narrative texts from different literary periods. A summary chapter gives an overview of previous narrative studies and theories, with extensive references. Chapters on temporalization and spatialization of language contrast the importance of time in narrative texts with the effect of grammatical metaphor, as described by M.A.K. Halliday, for scientific discourse. Chapters on prose fiction, poetry and the texts of digital culture chart changes in the texture of time with changes in the social context: narrative as social semiotic.
This book brings together a model of time and a model of language to generate a new model of narrative, where different stories with different temporalities and non-chronological modes of sequence can tell of different worlds of human and non-human experience, woven together (the texture of time) in the one narrative.
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Preface
1 Human consciousness and the dual experience of time felt and time
understood
2 Spatialization and scientific discourse, taking time out of language:
Benjamin Whorfs configuration of experience and M.A.K. Hallidays
grammatical metaphor
3 Levels of nature and worlds of time: J.T. Frasers model of five levels of
natural complexity associated with six worlds of different temporalities in
the extended human umwelt
4 Narrative studies and time: a summary history of scientific and
philosophical understandings of temporal meaning in narrative theory and
narratology
5 Language and worlds of experience: the basic concepts of M.A.K Hallidays
model of functional grammar, and its system of transitivity relating meaning
to worlds of experience
6 Temporalization and narrative texts, keeping time in language: projection
and narrative voice, expansion and narrative particularity
7 Narrative worlds and their temporalities: weaving the temporalities of
different worlds with different modes of coherence in the texture of one
narrative; dominant worlds in English literary texts, pre-printing to
postmodern
8 The meaning of story: the mode of coherence of each thread/theory telling
the temporality of one narrative world, with examples from different
historical periods
9 Prose fiction and the texture of time: detailed study and comparison of
extracts from three canonical novels of classic realism, modernism and
postmodernism
10 Poetry and the texture of time: extending the model of temporalities to
the traditional, modernist and postmodern poem, and the complex poetic
weaving of temporal meanings
11 Digital culture and the texture of time, post postmodernism or
Index
Rosemary Huisman is Honorary Associate Professor in English at The University of Sydney. She is the author of The Written Poem, Semiotic Conventions from Old to Modern English, six chapters in Narrative and Media, and numerous articles on literary and legal language; she is also a published poet.
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