Introduction: Time and Narrative, the Missing Link between the “Narrative Turn” and Postclassical Narratology?

Abstract

The three volumes of Time and Narrative (1983 – 85) were published — and soon translated to English (1984 – 88) — in a pivotal moment for narrative studies and for narratology. In the middle of the eighties, the interest in narratives began to spread beyond the traditional fields of literary studies and linguistics and to influence almost all humanities disciplines. However, this remarkable expansion of narrative studies is disconnected from the evolution of narratology, which at the same time entered a period of “crisis” (RimmonKenan 1989), before its revival under the label of “postclassical narratology” (Herman 1997). Indeed, there is a tension between, on the one side, the proliferation of narrative studies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and on the other side, the loss of interest in the theorization of