| This study investigates the temporal arrangements of narrative and how the interplay of these forms influences---and perhaps determines---narrative outcomes. The inquiry considers conceptions of narrative intimated in J. Hillis Miller's description of coherence and closure in narrative fictions, Frank Kermode's notions of narrative concord and readerly skepticism, Edward Branigan's idea of narrative efficacy, and David Bordwell's explication of knowledge and ambiguity in film narration. The examination proceeds to assay the narrative cast of language; the iterative disposition of language and narrative; the connate natures of personification, determinism, and temporality; and the lyric temper of narrative. Two texts, Indian author Arundhati Roy's novel, The God of Small Things (1997), and German filmmaker Tom Tykwer's movie, Run Lola Run (1998), are appraised from these theoretical frames of reference. Finally, this analysis proposes an account of the figurative effects of temporal dialectic and metanarrative rupture and their redemptive potentials. |
