Narrative Time by Paul Ricoeur

The configural dimension, in turn, displays temporal features that may be opposed to these "features" of episodic time. The configurational arrangement makes the succession of events into significant wholes that are the correlate of the act of grouping together. Thanks to this reflective act - in the sense of Kant's Critique of Judgment - the whole plot may be translated into one "thought." "Thought," in this narrative context, may assume various meanings. It may characterize, for instance, following Aristotle's Poetics, the "theme" (dianoia) that accompanies the "fable" or "plot" (mythos) of a tragedy.1 "Thought" may also designate the "point" of the Hebraic maschal or of the biblical parable, concerning which Jeremias observes that the point of the parable is what allows us to translate it into a proverb or an aphorism. The term "thought" may also apply to the "colligatory terms" used in history writing, such terms as "the Renaissance," "the Industrial Revolution," and so on, which, according to Walsh and Dray, allow us to apprehend a set of historical events under a common denominator. (Here "colligatory terms" correspond to the kind of explanation that Dray puts under the heading of "explaining what.") In a word, the correlation between thought and plot supersedes the "then" and "and then" of mere succession. But it would be a complete mistake to consider "thought" as a-chronological. "Fable" and "theme" are as closely tied together as episode and configuration. The time of fable-and theme, if we may make of this a hyphenated expression, is more deeply temporal than the time of merely episodic narratives.

1. It may be noted in passing that this correlation between "theme" and "plot" is also the basis of Northup Frye's "archetypal" criticism.

Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris (Nanterre) and John Nuveen Professor at the University of Chicago. Some of his works to appear in English are Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, Main Trends in Philosophy, and The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays on Hermeneutics. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling," appeared in the Autumn 1978 issue.