NARRATIVE tense: definition, types and examples

Within the elements of a narrative which are basic, narrative time is one of them. When we talk about weather we are referring both to the time in which history passes (the future, the past, etc.), as well as the time of the speech, that is, if it is a chronological time, if there are jumps in time, etc. All these elements will give the plot a more interesting touch on a literary level and will help to better build and define the story. In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to offer you a definition of narrative time, as well as the types, characteristics and examples that will help you better understand this literary concept.

Index

1. What is narrative time: simple definition
2. Types of narrative tenses
3. Narrative time characteristics

In the Narrative texts there are different elements that help us to better organize the story we want to tell. The definition of the characters, the plot or the narrative action, the space in which the work takes place, the Narrative time and the narrative voice are the five essentials and that we always find in this type of text literary.

But what exactly is narrative time? Is about perspective on time that the narrator of the story offers us. Basically it is about framing the events in a temporal moment: it may be that the author has created a novel that is located in Prehistory or that, on the other hand, makes us travel to the year 3000. This choice of historical time It is vital to be able to know the plot better because it is not the same to think of a woman aborting in the century XXI than in the XV, the historical context is of utmost importance to understand the plot in its most deep.

But, in addition to this time frame, it is also important to know internal timeThat is, does the story happen in different years or does it only happen in a single day? The time in which the events described are developed are also part of the conception of narrative time and must be known when making a literary or text comment.

The importance of the storyteller

It is very important to know before what kind of narrator we are, since if we are facing a first person narrator, the reader will be totally subject to the knowledge that he / she has about what is narrated, as there may be resources rhetoric in which an attempt is made to manipulate the reader, or there may be interpretations or memories that are altered by the memory. On the other hand, if the narrator is omniscient it will mean that we are faced with a type of narrative voice that knows everything.

In general, a first-person narrator is usually a type of character who is quite close to the events he is narrating, because they have happened to him or her; On the other hand, the third person can talk about events that have occurred at other times, because he is not the protagonist. For this reason, taking into account the type of narrator is essential to determine the narrative time.

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Now that we know the definition of narrative time well, we are going to discover in more detail the different types of times that we can find within a narrative.

External time

As we have commented in the previous section, historical time is that which refers to the moment of history in which we find ourselves. It may be that the plot places us in the present, but it may also be that it is set in the 80s or in the future. The time can be deduced because the narrator himself indicates it explicitly in the novel or, instead, it can be deduce by the appearance of a specific environment, customs or characters that make us go back in the weather.

Internal time

Within the types of narrative times, the time we call internal is the one that refers to the duration of the events exposed in the plot. There are some novels whose time extends over centuries and, on the other hand, others in which the events happen in a single day. In cases where the time is very long, the narrator ellipses the times that he considers uninteresting to prevent the reading rate from slowing down. The internal time is divided into two subbeats:

• Story time, that is, the time in which the events narrated actually take place (for example, during the 1960s)
• Speech time, that is, the order in which the events are shown. It may be that time is linear, that it has different jumps in time, that it begins at the end, and so on.

To better understand the narrative time, we must attend to three main characteristics that will help us to detect it and to know the tools used by the author.

Order of narration

It may be that the order of the story is not the same as the order of the speech, that is, that the plot begins in the middle or at the end, for example. In these cases, the temporary relationships can be the following:

• Analepsis or hindsight. It is when the narrator remembers an event that has taken place in the past (in the cinema it is called flashback).
• Prolepsis or anticipation. It takes place when we anticipate the future and an event is told that will take place later in history.

Story length

Another characteristic of narrative time has to do with duration. That is, a story can last seconds, but be explicitly explained and occupy an entire novel; and the same happens in reverse. In this sense, we find different resources used in the literature:

• Deceleration. It is when we dedicate more narrative time than necessary to a historical event. For example, we recounted the experience of a kiss for thirty pages when, in reality, the kiss lasted a few seconds.
• Acceleration. It is just the opposite, trying to summarize everything that happened in a long period of time in fewer pages. Within the acceleration we find the ellipsis, which is when a passage of the story is directly omitted.

Expression of narrative time

In order to express the time that takes place within a narrative, two types of elements are used:

• Verbal tense. Verbs are responsible for expressing actions and, therefore, are essential when determining narrative time.
• Temporal indicators. It is also common to find indicators throughout the novel that tell us how the actions happen. These indicators are usually adverbs like meanwhile, later, the next day, etc.

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If you want to read more articles similar to Narrative time: definition, types and examples, we recommend that you enter our category of Writing.

• Ricoeur, P. (2003). Time and narration: configuration of time in the historical account (Vol. 1). XXI century.
• Ricoeur, P. (2003). Time and narration. III: The narrated time (Vol. 3). XXI century.
• Vial, J. P. (2002). Poetics of time: ethics and aesthetics of narration. University Publishing House.