Time in Narrative: “Fabula — Syuzhet” and “Story — Discourse” vs Semiotic Triangle

Abstract

The article explores the essence of the cognate oppositions “fabula — syuzhet” and “story — discourse” through the prism of the semiotic triangle concept. The “corners” of the semiotic triangle (thing, thought, symbol) are not aspects of one and the same phenomenon, but independent types of phenomena, and each of them has its own temporality. The author proves that the substance of the plot / discourse is a thought (sense), and not a text as a unity of sense and its acoustic-graphic expression. The time of the syuzhet / discourse (the time of thinking about the object) can not only differ from the time of the fabula / story, but fundamentally does not need it, since it has a different ontological basis; as a consequence, its counterpart exists in any kind of text, not just in narrative. If the text presents events to the reader in the mode of sensual “pseudo-living,” the time of the syuzhet / discourse tends to coincide with the time of the fabula / story. But the rational grasp, based on abstraction, allows thinking to use for its movement not only temporal, but also other “dimensions” of the described material.