A Comparative Review of the Functions of Narrative Time in

New Novel and Iranian Drama: A Genettian Approach to

Narratology
(Case Studies: Novel of "Erasers" by Alain Robbe-Grillet and
Drama of "Sepas" by Alireza Naderi)
AkramBahramian
Department of Dramatic Literature, TarbiatModaresUniversity, Tehran, Iran
E-mail: ab.bahramian@yahoo.com
Tel: +98-912-6025564
Mohammad Jafar Yousefian Kenari (Corresponding Author)
Department of Dramatic Literature, TarbiatModaresUniversity, Tehran, Iran
E-mail: yousefian@modares.ac.ir
Tel: +98-21-82883734
Abstract
Drawing upon some Gerard Genette's key concepts of literary narratology,
thispaper tries to examine the possibility of using the functions of narrative time in drama.
Given that common effects of one narrative function can be found in modern literary
works, especially in Iranian new novel and dramas which reflect the impact of world
literature on Iranian narrative models, the research emphasizes on the importance of
adynamic process of some literary and drama interdisciplinary information. Using
Genette's view on narrative time, two texts selected from Iranian dramatic literature (Sepas2009) and western literary fiction (the Earsers-1953) are comparatively and critically
analyzed. In a descriptive-analytic approach, the authors try to show how the concepts
related to modern narratology are helpful in analyzing not only novels but also modern
dramatic literature. The outcomesof exploring analytic devices related to narrative time
such as order, frequency and duration, also functions like Narrative Anachrony,Analepsis
and Prolepsis, and Descriptive Pauseshow Iranian modern dramatic techniques are in
functional interaction with modern literary criticism.
Keywords: Iranian dramas, Gerard Genette, Narrative time, New novel, AlainRobbeGrillet, AlirezaNaderi.

1. Introduction
The emergence of new mode of narrative in a series of modern literature works has drawn increasing
attention to the importance of literary narratology issues. One of these modern topics concerns the
function of time in contemporary narratives. The French theoretician, Gerard Genette, is among those
who have, in their works, focused on the notion of time in literary modes of narrative and have
analyzed different components of narrative time in various literary pieces. Narrative, in its broad sense,
is the method or technique through which the writer presents with attraction and variety a series of
events and adventures related to his/her fictional characters. Although narrative and narration have
drawn the attention of a lot of literary theoreticians and critics since Aristotle, their interdisciplinary
effects on other human sciences and knowledge have recently been significant. For the narrative
element is one of the common aspects of literary and dramatic texts, researchers usually consider story
design or in other words the narrative configuration in reinterpreting different components of time in

these works. From past to present narrative and dramatic texts have been related to the concept of time
in one way or another and have depicted different ways of its representation. Since the narrative pattern
is mostly linear in classic works, for instance, the time of the story in certain novels and plays and the
calendar time run parallel to each other. However, in the modern age when there is a sort of break in
literary narrative forms, narrative time moves heterogeneously as well; for instance it somehow
fluctuates from past to present, from present to past, and directly from present to far future. Thus
novelists and playwrights succeeded in putting together texts which belong to various periods and
achieving a multi-dimensional narrative in their works. The result of this multi-dimensional narrator is
putting different layers of time together and eventually reaching a kind of additive influence on the
quality of the reader's information reception through breaking the norms at the level of narrative time.
Having briefly reviewed Genette's most important views on narrative time and importance and
position of New Novel as one of the most obvious narrative-centered literary forms, the current study
traces time indicators in the aforementioned works under study and finally presents the results of its
findings in relevant figure s and tables.

2. Literature review
2.1Time and its narrative functions in new novel
The importance and the role of time is one of the most fundamental issues which has drawn much
attention to itself in the fields of modern literary theory, language, and aesthetics. Emile Benvenist,
Boris Tomashevski, Paul Ricoeure, Gerard Genette, and RimmonKenan have developed various
theories upon the position of time and its role in narrative. For instance, Paul Ricoeure, the well-known
French philosopher and literary man, in his three-volume book Time and Narrative investigates the
theoretical attempts to keep time out of narrative principles: "Theorizing about time is a futile task and
narrative endeavor can only respond to it" (Ricoeure, 2005:22). In fact Ricoeure believes that time is
considered a human issue as far as it is organized as to imitate the mechanism of a narrative. After the
emergence of modern age, telling and showing became the general ways of narratives. In that age some
critics thought of objective and dramatic narrative forms as superior to mere telling. Some including
Henry James, however, through the use of the narrator's presence could mix telling and showing
successfully while they kept their distance from the story and also honored their authorities as a writer
(Meghdadi,1999: 277-278). In general it can be said that a text in which the story is narrated directly
by the narrator is called a diegetic text, and a text in which the story is not narrated directly by the
narrator, but by the characters is known to be a dramatic text.
New Novel is considered as one of the most important contemporary literary styles which,
along with social and political evolutions, became popular in France in the late 1960s. New novel
criticizes both realist and classical telling methods in novel. In these stories, in general, time is the most
transformable element in the novel. Incidents are incomprehensible due to the ambiguity of time and
time shifts cause such illusion in incidents that the reader is not able to comprehend the occurrence of
events, unless they first figure out the peculiarities of time (Jafar Naderi, 2003:71). In many works of
Alain Robbe-Grillet who is considered as one of the greatest figures in the aforementioned literary
movement, time is the major factor dominating the relations within the fictional world and since time is
created based on the characters' psychological state; it is a function whose variable is the person's
"spirit". In fact the contrast between the internal and external time is one of the features of new novel,
particularly in Robbe-Grillet's works. The American literary theorist Seymour Chatman, given the
importance of the role of time in analyzing narrative works, believes that in the process of analyzing a
narrative work, one must consider two time scales: the internal time, the time which is represented in
the work, and external time, the time through which the reader follows the story (Chatman, 1975: 313).
But this contrast between internal and external time and the collapse of borders between present, past,
and future is not only represented in fictional literature, but is considered the important feature of
narrative in many contemporary plays. Thus, since 1980s one can recover significant influences of the
instructions of modern literary criticism in the creative process of writing for drama which indicate the
inherent interaction of literary and dramatic implicative forms.

3. Hypotheses
H1: The authors try to examine that how the main problem of this research might be assessed
through an objective mode of comparing the facts extracted from the following propositions:
H2: Genettian Approach to Narratology is re-readable in dramatic literature like novel.
H3: Narrative time effects such as order, duration, and frequency have an important role in the
process of narration of a play such as novel.
H4: Anachrony, especially external analepsis makes the most important form of disturbing the order
and sequence of the narrative.

4. Research Method
For the purpose of examining the possibility of using the function of narrative time in drama and novel,
the article tries to compare time effects in the selected Iranian contemporary play (Sepas-2001) and the
western novel (Erasers-1953) .In a descriptive-analytic approach to these cases of study, the article
examines how narrative time effects help to analyze novels and dramas in a new perception. Providing
an overview of the history of Genettian Approach to Narratology, this study introduces and categorizes
some of the most important time effects in these texts.
4.1. Narrative and its theoretical importance in the criticism of dramatic literature
In the last three decades researchers have paid a great deal of attention to narrative displays of dramatic
texts. The spectrum of studies pertaining to literary stylistics often includes views and introduces new
techniques and key concepts in the criticism of dramatic literature which specifically investigate the
function of dramatic language and narrative diversities. One can refer to Mick Short as one of the
greatest researchers in this field who in a chapter of his Exploring the Language of Drama(1998) has
studied some of the concepts of modern literary criticism in certain contemporary dramatic works in
the West with an interdisciplinary approach (Short, 1998). Today, the circle of literary and dramatic
stylists associated with British circles are considered among those experts who, more than anything,
focus on the narrative functions of dramatic techniques and their balance rate with the world of
fictional literature. Daniel MacIntyre has, in a complete and precise collection of dramatic stylistic
evolutions, analyzed the diversities of dramatic narrator's point of view and declared, in comparison
with some of the greatest modern literary works, the function of narrative elements in modern dramatic
techniques on a par with novel (MacIntyre, 2006). On the other hand, some of the most important
dramatic narratologists belong to the German-speaking study circles. Manfred Jhan is one of these
figures who in his article Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of Narratology of
Drama(2001) study the dramatic language transformations from the perspective of literary narrative
potentials. Focusing on dramatic works known as absurd, particularly the English Harold Pinter's plays,
Jhan looks for an aspect of narrative factors related to dramatic act in Pinter's fictional characters'
speeches which in turn calls them dramatic speech-acts (Jhan, 2011). Also in his recent article
Storytelling and Drama: Exploring Narrative Episodes in Plays published by Drama's Comparative
Studies Journal, Mirzeler has concentrated on comparing the functions of anachrony and their role in
configuration of a modern dramatic narrative (Mirzeler, : 359-361). Thus one can say that narrative
time as one of the indicators for evaluating the organizing displays of fictional information in a
dramatic structure is considered today as one of the most important criteria in modern dramatic
literature criticism.
4.2. Narrative Time Divisions in Genette'sNarratology
The literary critic, RimmonKenan, in his famous article Time and Narrative has done an extensive
study on Genette's ideas about time. Kenan believes that Genette has distinguished "story time" from
"text time". From his perspective story time is the linear sequence of events and a contractual structure,
but text time doesn't have a temporal dimension but a spatial one (Kenan, 2002: 9). Genette relates the

path a story takes to move from calendar time toward narrative time (text) with "order", "duration", and
"frequency". He defines these factors as such:
A. Order
Order means the temporal sequence of the events in the story in the light of the presentation of these
events in narrative discourse. Propositions concerning order answer the "when" questions with words
such as first, second, last, after, and before:
Studying the time-bound order of narrative is based on the sequence that events or time-bound
sections are arranged in narrative speech, with the chronological sequence that these events or timebound sections have in the story, so as to the order and temporal sequence related to the story, is
referred to by the narration itself or is figured out by this or that clue. (Genette reported by
Ghasemipour, 2008: 131).
Genette calls any sort of disorder in the sequence of arrangement and in the sequence of events,
"anachrony", and refers to "analepsis" and "prolepsis" as two of the most general types of anachrony.
Explaining Genette's ideas, Kenan writes: Analepsis is the narration of the events in the story after the
later events are narrated, as if the narration refers back to a past in the story. Prolepsis, conversely, is
narrating the story events before the initial events are narrated, as if the narration moves to the future of
the story. (Kenan, 2002: 11). If events A, B, and C are sequenced in the text as B, C, A, event A is
analepsis then. But if these three events are sequenced as C, A, B, event C is prolepsis then. Both
analepsis and prolepsis narratives, from a temporal perspective, form the second layer of narration in
relation to the narrative in which they originated and which Genette calls first narrative. Another
important point Genette mentions concerning analepses is their being internal or external. Thus if
analepsis occurs before the starting point of the first narrative, it is an "external analepsis". But if
analepsis revives a past in the mind which has taken place after the starting point of the first narrative,
it is of "internal type". Moreover, if the period which analepsis includes is before the beginning of the
first narrative of the story, but in the late phase the story of this period is linked to the first narrative or
precedes it, then it is a "mixed analepsis" (ibid, 12). The other type of anachronyGenette deals with is
prolepsis. In Genette's idea, prolepses are used less than analepsis in the western tradition. Prolepsis in
fact predicts the future before it actually occurs. Like analepsis, prolepsis can cover a period beyond
the end of the first narrative. In this case the prolepsis is of the "external type". They can also cover a
period prior to or preceding the point which the first narrative narrates. In this case an "internal
prolepsis" is formed (ibid, 12-13).
B. Duration
Duration is, for Genette, the second feature of time which answers the "how long" question and
generally studies the duration of a certain act or event. According to Genette, one of the tools for
measuring duration is the time a text needs to be read which is different from one reader to another. It
is also possible that a reader reads a narrative in various times. Genette believes that it is only in
dialogue that any word in a text has an equivalent word in the story. He studies the relation between the
story's duration (minute, hour, day, month, and year) and the length of the text allocated to this
duration (measured by line or page). He calls the invariant relation between the story's duration and the
length of the allocated text to that part of the story dynamic stability and suggests it as the norm for
measuring the degrees of continuity. Considering the dynamic stability as the norm, there are two types
of speed of time: "acceleration" and "deceleration". Acceleration is allocating a short piece of text to a
long duration of story. Deceleration in narrative, on the other hand, means allocating a long piece of
text to a short duration of story (ibid, 15-16). For instance, when every page of the text equals a month
in the character's life and its events, the acceleration is constant. But allocating a lot of pages of the text
to a short duration of the character's life creates deceleration. Allocating a short part to a long duration
of the character's life, however, leads to the creation of acceleration. Genette believes deceleration in
its ultimate form leads to "descriptive pause" because the lengthy description of the event makes the
duration of reading to be longer than duration of the event. On the other hand, Genette believes that

acceleration ultimately creates "ellipsis" because the writer based on his taste and the necessity of the
story, selects the incidents or narrates only at the level of passing references (ibid, 16). Genette of
course believes that there is a dynamic state between ultimate acceleration and deceleration, but in
practice it is narrowed down to two dynamics: "summary" and "scene". He argues that summary is a
type of narrative in which the sequence of events is narrated based on a dense and compact report. This
means that the duration of speech is shorter than the story. He thinks of scene as atype in which the
duration of the story and that of the speech move hand in hand. This means that the story's belatedness
and that of the speech are matched with each other. Genette believes that scene is an attempt to display
events and it is a sort of mimesis (Ghasemipour, 2008: 138).
C. Frequency
The third component of time according to Genette is frequency. It is a feature which, according to
Kenan, has not been dealt with in narrative before Genette. Frequency answers the "how often"
question and is defined as such: "the relation between the number of times as event is repeated in the
story and the number of relations of that event in the text (Kenan, 2002: 18). Frequency has different
types, namely "singulativeFrequency", "repetitiveFrequency", and "iterative Frequency".
Singulative Frequency: narrates an event as frequent as it occurs in the outer world. This is the
most common narrative mode (ibid, 18). In other words it narratesN times what occurs n times. For
instance when we say, "I went to the park yesterday," this is as frequent as one occurrence of the event
in reality.
Repetitive Frequency: narrates more than once something which has occurred once. For
example when we say, "I went to the park yesterday", "I went to the park yesterday" it creates
repetitive frequency. Genette believes that in repetitive narration, narrator, point of view, duration,
narrative issue, style, etc. sometimes change and sometimes do not (ibid, 19). In his book,The Poetics
of Prose, (1977)Todorov considers different types of repetitive narrative such as repetitive narration of
a single story by a single person, supplementary narrations by several fictional characters about single
phenomena and also contradictory narratives of one or some characters about a single event which
raise doubt about the reality of that event. (Todorov, 2000: 61).
Iterative Frequency: narrates only once an event which has occurred more than once (Kenan,
2002: 19). For instance, "I went to the park every single day of the week." Here going to the park has
occurred seven times (every day in a week) but since it is narrated only once we have iterative
frequency. Todorov believes this type of narrative is a well-known schema in classical literature. In
this type the writer basically narrates the initial mode using progressive verbs and does this before
entering the series of special events which make his/her report (ibid, 62). In general, iterative frequency
is one of those components whose reinterpretation in narrative requires several readings of the text.

5. The Analysis of Narrative Functions of Time in the novel of Erasers and drama
of Sepas
5.1. The Narrative Headline of the Literary Case: Erasers (1953-Alain Robbe-Grillet)
In one of the postwar years in a coastal town in northern France, one of the members of a political,
anti-government organization called Garniatti tries to murder Daniel Dupont, the professor of national
economy. His attempt fails and the bullet shot by the runaway villain only causes a slight wound on
Dupont's arm. Dupont orders to be taken to his friend's clinic and the news of his death get published in
the press. That night an anti-spy special agent called Wallace arrives in town to investigate the case.
Not being aware of Dupont's misleading decision, he does his investigations and following a series of
incidents, he murders Dupont unintentionally 24 hours after the fake announcement of his death.
5.2. The Narrative Headline of the Literary Case: Sepas (2009-Alireza Naderi)
The play tells the story of six members of a family some of whom have been directly involved with
war in the warring years and now they are looking for an answer to their bewilderments for the

perspective of the events in those years. This play, in fact, is a review of a soldier's memories. The
soldier, Alireza, went to war when he was 17 but lost his memory due to an injury caused in war. On
his return to home, Alireza notices everything, compared with pre-war years, has changed. Because of
his brain injury he now has to remember the war memories with the help of those around him.
5.3.Reinterpreting Order in the Novel and Play
The novel Erasers starts at 7:30 A.M. of a Tuesday and ends at the same time the next day. Like James
Joyce's Ulysses, the novel narrates 24 hours of the life of a person called Wallace, a special agent in
charge of investigating Professor Daniel Dupont's murder case. In fact he is looking for a murderer
who has not murdered. In the very beginning of the story Wallace' watch stops working which shows
that in this novel the reader is not supposed to deal with objective time but with mental time, a time
which has lost its regular order and discipline. Therefore time in this novel sometimes accelerates,
sometimes slows down and sometimes stops. Moreover, the regular sequence is not observed in this
novel. By moving forward and backward in time and applying cinematic techniques such as flashback
and sudden shift and mix of scenes, the writer was able to create a sort of anachrony in his narration of
the events, for what is remembered by main characters is not in line with the temporal sequence but is
based on association, similarities, and symmetry. In the very beginning of the story, the writer
somehow refers to the anachrony of time:
Unfortunately soon the ruler's time will come to an end. Today's events, even if trivial,
intermingled with doubt and fault will soon start working and gradually disturb the desirable order.
(Grillet, 2003: 12)
In this novel time has a heterogeneous move. For instance it fluctuates from past to present,
from present to past, and directly from present to far future. Time in this novel is in fact like a clock
hanging on the wall of the mind which moves slow or fast with the tempo of the mind or it stops.
Wallace has come to a small town to investigate about a political murder. He gets to a boulevard after 6
or 7 hours. His eye caught the sight of a brick house in which the murder has been committed. He
suddenly returns to 30 years ago in his childhood and reviews his memories. Anachrony in the time of
this story is dependent upon analepsis and there is no time in its real sense. The real time is Wallace's
mind time, when he is exploring and searching into himself:
He once came to town when he was a kid. The image of a deadlock canal and an old boat
fastened near the harbor remained in his mind. The skeleton of the sailboat? (ibid, 57-58)
In another instance when Dr. Juar a day after the day when the incident has occurred, goes to
the police station to have some explanation over the issue, he describes the night of murder as such:
When I arrived he lay injured on his bed waiting for me. He talked to me and to save more
time he accepted upon my insistence that I take him to clinic without a trolley. (ibid, 143)
The two examples mentioned above are of external analepsis type because they took place
before the occurrence of the story's first narrative (Wallace' arrival in town) which is at 7:30 on
Tuesday morning. On the other hand there are some instances of internal analepsis in this story. It is
when the characters review the events after Wallace' arrival in town (first narrative). In one of these
instances Wallace goes to the post office to investigate more on the murder through a young girl
working there. The young girl talks about the presence of the murderer (Garniatti) in the post office
today morning:
The young girl answers after contemplating for a while: Yes, that's right. You weren't here
then. He came a little bit after 11. Something which, apart from the sunset, sometimes occurs at this
time. (ibid, 250)
The murderer's (Garniatti) visit to the post office has occurred today morning, which is after the
beginning of the story's first narrative that is at 7:30 in the morning. Therefore a sort of external
analepsis can be observed here. In the Erasers,anachronies are of analepsis type. They play an
important role in reflecting the world in the mind of the characters and their move form present to past.
On the other hand, in this novel future possible events are revived in the characters' minds and become
current in the present. This prolepsis anachrony plays a role in the characters' mental move from

present to future, such as the scene where Marsha images her own death in the professor's office on
going to Dupont's villa to take the documents:
Marsha tonight realizes details which never caught her attention. Tweeting doors, scary
views, unexplainable shadows. (ibid, 191)
Since this prolepsis refers to a time after the first narrative, it is considered as internal prolepsis.
In general it can be said that prolepsis cause the question of "what will happen next?" which helps to
create a sort of suspicion in the story. In this work narrative in its classical mode is left aside and
structurally those techniques which are mostly common in cinema are used. Thus images from
different times and events are set next to each other to form the mental events. In other words, a series
of objects, occasions, and a sequence of events are such arranged in the imagination that they induce a
particular feeling.
As mentioned earlier, order is assessed in fictional and dramatic texts with words such as first,
second, last, etc. and in the play Sepas these concepts can be observed:
Today is Friday, last night was Thursday. We had guests. A lot of guests. (Naderi, 2009:10)
Yesterday we were talking about your future fianc, I almost three or four times said that
Hamid is already married. (ibid, 41)
Words like today, last night, and yesterday when are related to time have an important role in
this play for due his brain injury in war, Alireza cannot comprehend the concept of time well and this is
his mother who through using words which encompass the concept of time plays the role of the
"reminder" of every moment, revives the time for him, and reminds him of what has occurred in the
past or what has occurred to him last night. On the other hand because of the duality of time in this
play, one can observe traces of anachrony in it. As mentioned earlier, anachrony is created when the
natural sequence is disturbed and events are narrated not in the real order but in a new order. In this
play time doesn't obey the regular order and takes a new form which is the result of Alireza's damaged
mind. In fact the shot he experienced when he was 17 not only has injured his brain, but also has
disturbed the passing of time in his mind. Mohsen, Alireza's brother, once describes Alireza's condition
as such:
The bullet which ruined your brain, took all your past. I wish it didnt and now every morning
when you wake up, all this story should be told to you again and a hundred more times. (ibid, 36)
Many of the play's scenes are looked at through his mind frame while time for him, because of
his brain injury, has a different meaning from others. Thus it is not surprising that Alireza, through the
writer's schema, returns to his past and takes the reader with him in this journey. Among all
anachronies, we deal with external analepsis more. For instance every time Alireza recalls his war
memories, analepsis takes the external form. In fact the play narrates one day in Alireza's life, which is
the Friday. The narrative starts on Friday morning and lasts by the end of the day. So Friday morning is
the time of the first narrative in this work and war refers to several years ago when Alireza was about
17. It is clear that the play's analepses are more of external type. Some instances are mentioned below:
Alireza: They bombarded the artillery. Thousands of us lay on the ground with stretched
bodies and legs. If we could have made one more step, we could be on the other side of the Earth. And
then it was Doomsday. Wow God! (ibid, 32)
Or when he describes the martyrdom of one soldier:
Alireza: Somebody shouted "help." Somebody shouted 'not possible'"."Somebody shouted 'one
is martyred here. The bullet hit his forehead.'" I heard it. Then I heard Jalal saying "I don't think a
chubby can fly. (ibid, 33)
This analepsis refers to the war and Alireza with his sentences helps the reader return to the
past. Wallace Martin believes, As a story stands against reality and truth, so does the narrative against
anachrony rules, in that it depicts what it is, whether in the past or in the future. (Martin, 2007: 142)
Comparing the novel and the play, it seems that both have separated some pieces of the past and
brought them to the present. Of course this past in the novel Erasers is near past (24 hours ago) but in
the play Sepas it is far past (several years ago). Toolan, when discussing narrative, writes: Time,
meaning systematic measurement of what separates certain past occasions from our present, is itself a

systematic and structural concept.(Toolan, 1988: 42).It is seen in these two works that by bringing
past to present, a certain structure has been created in their narratives, a narrative which endeavors to
avoid regular linear narratives and approaches a non-linear type of narrative. Figure 1 compares the
anachrony in these two texts.
Figure 1:

Order in Novel of Erasers and Drama of Sepas

5.3.1.Reinterpreting Duration in the Novel and Play

An important issue related to duration is a mental quantity known as acceleration. Looking generally at
the novel Erasers one can say that deceleration dominates the story because all pages of the novel are
only allocated to a short duration of characters' lives. This has led to a slow rhythm in the novel and
sometimes the rhythm is so slow that it seems time has stopped moving. The detailed description of the
incident makes the duration longer than the incident itself and this ultimately leads to the formation of
a descriptive pause in the story. Story begins in a winter day about 7:30 in the morning and ends at the
same time the next day. This means all the events of the story explained in 325 pages focus on 24
hours. The fact that a lot of pages of the book narrate only 24 hours of the events in the characters' lives
clarify the point that in the story we deal with long descriptions all of which revolve around Dupont's
murder.
In this story everything is constantly repeating and basically repetition of events is one of the major
techniques in the narration method of the story. This has led to the fact that the story, instead of
moving forward, stays in a static mode. Manfred Pfister in his book The Theory and Analysis of
Drama argues on the repetitive events in a narrative text: Durational and repetitive events are related
to this type of static idea of time, the same as the act leading to changes in a situation is related to the
progressive idea of time.(Pfister, 2008: 337). In this novel Dupont's murder is repeated over and over
again in the mind of some characters such as Commissar Loran and Wallace. This has led to the mental
idea of time to replace its objective notion. But what influenced on the deceleration which dominates
the story and has intensified it, is the temporal relations existing in the internal communicative system
of the work, that is the sequence of events or the simultaneity of events. According to Pfister, the
temporal relations existing in the internal communicative system of a work are determined based on
two axes: the horizontal axis which includes the sequence of events and events come one after the other
and the vertical axis which includes simultaneous events and is in fact the product of the confluence
between a couple of different situations, acts, and events (ibid, 361-362). The move of the events in the
vertical mode has caused the duration of time to be long for the reader as it is for characters in the
story.
The temporal relation dominating Eraser should be studied on the vertical axis of the simultaneity of
the events. In this story, events don't come one after the other, rather the dramatic situation of the story
is the product of the confluence between a couple of different situations and actions occurring
simultaneously. In Erasers we see that the situations and actions of characters such as Daniel Dupont,
Wallace, Garniatti, and Joar are narrated simultaneously. For instance the narrative says that Wallace is
doing something and simultaneously he is doing something else. So it can be generally said the writer
of this novel has tried to make the time static by simultaneous narration of events which are occurring
simultaneously.
On the other hand it seems in the play Sepas there is also a sort of deceleration because all the pages of
the play (45 pages) are allocated to one day (Friday) in the life of Alireza. It means that all the events
in the play occur during one day. Alireza and everything which happens to him during that one day is

serious and elastic so the playwright has attempted to prevent the passing of time for Alireza as long as
possible. Somewhere in the play Alireza says: This is my fate as long as I'm alive. I'll be born
everyday, tell everyone and die at night again. (Naderi, 2009:36). In fact because of the shot in his
head everything is purges from his mind when he sleeps at night and tomorrow everything is
remembered and repeated for him once again. This repetition is boring for others and has lost its
importance but is still new for Alireza. BabakAhmadi believes when something is repeated in a
narrative or dramatic work, every time it is repeated it loses some of its semantic aspects or gains new
aspects" (Ahmadi, 2008:192). It is the same in this play too. Every time Alireza remembers his war
memories, Mohsen finds them repetitive and boring:
Mohsen: This story is not repetitive for you since every sunset your mind is purged of everything. But
for us it is too repetitive and boring. The excessive repetition of this story has ruined its importance.
(Naderi, 2009:36).
Each time repetition and going to the past leads to exploring a new aspect of Alireza's life, but it has
nothing but boredom for others. Therefore the writer has tried to involve the reader with one day of
Alireza's life so that the reader, just like those around Alireza, gets trapped in this boredom and
experiences it. From a general perspective it can be said that nothing happens in this play to make time
progress as a result. For event and time have close relation with each other, reports are only narrated
rather than they occur. The figure below depicts duration in the novel and play.
Figure 2:

Duration in Novel of Erasers and Drama of Sepas

5.3.2. Reinterpreting Frequency in the Novel and Play

This is the third component of time which studies the relation between the number of times an event is
repeated and the number of times it is narrated in the text. Frequency has various types and RobbeGrillet makes use of all of them. He has often narrated once and event which has happened more than
once. For instance Daniel Dupont's return from faculty to home is something which has occurred a lot
but since it is narrated only once in the novel it has created iterative frequency:
As soon as he returned from the faculty, he arrested himself in his office and stayed there till late at
night. I saw him only when he came to the dining room. Right on time: noon and 7 at night. (Grillet,
2003: 235-236)
Like other narrative texts, the writer has narrated most of his story by using singulative frequency.
Wallace's attendance in town's post office, for instance, is an event which has occurred four times in
the novel and the writer has narrated this event four times in the story as well:
When he wants to hand in the letter to him, to be humorous pretends that he wants to follow the rules
and asks: Do you have your membership card with you, sir? (ibid, 214)
On the other hand a closer look at the novel reveals that due to the type of the story which is in the
genre of detective fiction, repetitive frequency has an essential role in the formation of the narrative,
for the incident of Dupont's murder has occurred once, but is repeatedly narrated by different

characters such as Wallace, Garniatti, Dr. Joar, Loran and other characters. In these reports, apart from
the narrator, duration of the story and some details at times vary too:
Loran: Nothing has happened! Just a corpse from a suicide; and now this corpse leaves here quietly.
(ibid, 48)
Dr. Joar: He collapsed on the way in the car. Since then he ensured me that he is fine but then I
realized his heart is injured. The shot was in his body. He could have been saved. But his heart stopped
working during the operation. (ibid, 104)
Wallace: Dupont was superficially injured by the first shot. The second bullet was not shot. It didn't
drop out but was trapped in the gun. Therefore on the office's floor (ibid, 220-221)
Here too the writer by his special method of narration has tried to create a medium so that the reader
could experience his desirable temporal mood and get involved in his time games which are the result
of the repetition of events. The presence of the writer in this novel and his lingual and structural games
often encompasses time. For instance, sometimes the writer in the position of an omnipotent narrator
narrates part of an occurring event in a foretelling mood that as if that imagination occurs in the text
once and then in its contractual main time the already promised event does not take place. This is only
possible by a non-committed omnipotent narration and by being fluid in time.
On the other hand a close look at the play Sepas shows that Naderi as the creator of the play has chosen
different types of frequency to narrate his story. Alireza's visit with his brother occurs a lot but since
the writer narrates them only once iterative frequency is created:
Mohsen: You see me every day. First you don't know me but once your engine starts working, we
begin quarreling. (ibid, 11).
Or people's attendance in Alireza's house when he is injured occurs more than once, but it is only
narrated once by Alireza's mother:
Mother: On top of a long cypress grew a so beautiful red flower! Since then people come to visit. Our
house changed into temple. (ibid, 19)
But in the following example Alireza's dispatch to war has occurred only once in his life but his mother
narrates it more than once and therefore repetitive frequency in created:
Mother: when you left, it started raining. (ibid, 20)
Mother: I recall that you went among children's sweets and colored papers and it was spring. (ibid,
21)
Mother: You went in spring . . . What a rainy day it was! (ibid, 22)
An important point should be mentioned here and that is the repetitive frequency is basically used
when the writer wants to show the importance of a certain event to a certain person(s). here, for
example, Alireza's first dispatch to war is such important for his mother that she narrates it with
different methods and in different situations. Regarding singulative frequency such as the novel
Erasers, Naderi has narrated some events as frequent as they have occurred during the play and has
been able to reach a sort of singulative frequency. For instance Alireza is talking to Mohsen and he
recalls one of his memories regarding their uncle:
Alireza: Fruit of flower? God rest the uncle. I said flower. He said it's hard, fruit is better. I said fruit
of sin. He was surprised. I said apple is the fruit of lust. He stared at me. What grade are you in? He
asked. First grade of high school I said. (ibid)
This conversation between Alireza and his uncle has occurred once and it has been narrated once in the
play. It should be mentioned here that both in the novel Erasers and in the play Sepas the domineering
frequency is repetitive frequency because important events are always repeating in the mind of the
novel's and play's main characters and they take the audience with themselves in this repetition. In fact
in both works time becomes meaningful by passing through the present and returning to the past. The
following graph shows the similarity between the frequency in the play and novel.

Figure 3:

Frequency in Novel of Erasers and Drama of Sepas

6. Comparing Time in Works under Study

Studying the play Sepas and the novel Erasers indicated the mental nature of time in both works and
this has led to the fact that time in both works doesn't follow a linear logic. In the play, war is
intermingled with Alireza's imagination and poetry and as a result time becomes fluid. Here two types
of passing the time is clear; one, passing the time for Alireza who can't remember anything because of
the shot he had at war and every next day everything revives for him. The other one is passing the time
for others who live in the real world and are involved in a routine life. But the domineering time in this
pay is Alireza's mental time which has stopped since he was 17. This is the point referred to at the very
beginning of the play:"He is 36 but looks like he is 17" (ibid, 9). Alireza is still 17 the age he was at
war. Time seems to have stopped for him.
Time in the novel Erasers is mental too as if the novel's main character's watch has stopped
working. Wallace realizes at his very entrance to the town that his watch isn't working. This continues
throughout the whole novel and it is only at the end of the story that his watch starts working as a result
of an important event and the watch hands start moving. In the first lines of the novel Erasers we read
that "unfortunately soon the ruler's time will come to an end." (Grillet, 2003:12) This sentence at the
beginning of the story and the damage to Wallace's watch imply that in this story we don't deal with the
objective time (clock time) but with mental time that is Wallace' mental time. As for Wallace, time
has stopped moving for the reader throughout the story. What is remarkable about the static time in
these two works is that in many moments o them there is no external act or it is so slow that is doesn't
feel like moving or passing time for the audience. Manfred Pfister believes that in the past the idea of
time and its passing were generally thought of as a kind of progress and sequence of events and we
seldom see the static time in literary and dramatic work. But from his opinion basically "being mental
is clearly one of the important features of modern drama" (Pfister, 2008: 376).
Writers in both works, through the use of techniques such as internalizing the novel and the
play's acts, have been able to communicate the static sense to their audience. The mental time in both
works has provided the possibility of time games for both writers. In both works under study we can
see the narrative plays an important role. Narrative in both works is mostly based on the past events.
Therefore the role of analepsis is more obvious than other anachronies. JakobLothe writes in his
bookNarrative in Fiction and Film:The first and the greatest type of narrative is analepsis. In this type
which is also the most common one, the events of the story are narrated after they occur. (Lothe,
2007:71). In Erasers different types of analepses are observed. When Daniel Dupont's last night murder
is talked about, external analepsis is created and when the events following his murder are narrated, the
external analepsis carries the narrative forward. Also the story's characters, as mentioned earlier, often
look at the future and describe the events which may happen then. Here anachrony finds its prolepsis

form. But in Sepas,Alireza is continually narrating his war incidents so anachrony becomes of external
analepsis type. Of course the distance between the narrative's act and reported events are different in
these works. This distance is back to the last night in Erasers and in Sepas it goes back to 15 years ago.
Investigating duration in both works shows that deceleration dominates both of them. All the play
covers one day in Alireza's life which is Friday. The novel also narrates these events from 7:30 on
Tuesday to 7:30 the next day. It means the novel also narrates 24 hours of the characters' lives. The
difference between the novel and the play, however, is the formation of descriptive pause in the novel.
Here the writer by using this technique has been able to narrate the event (Daniel Dupont's murder)
from different perspectives and narrated the characters' takes on that. These detailed descriptions have
helped the audience to reach a deep understanding of people and events. The existence of descriptive
pause in a narrative text, of course, slows down the audience's reading and therefore the time of the
story moves so slowly that it seems it has stopped moving.
Elaborating on frequency in Sepas and Erasers also indicate that all iterative, repetitive, and
singulative frequencies are used in these texts. The important point is that in both texts repetitive
frequency is used more by the writers than other types in the narrative of the story. This type of
frequency which is a feature of modern narrative texts is observed a lot in both works which shows the
importance of the occurred events in both works. In fact repetition in the narrative of the play and
novel is the essential component of the narrative. In the novel the characters' minds are involved with
Dupont's murder which has occurred once but is repeated in different ways throughout the story. This
repetition is through the words characters say or through mental conversations they have with that
event. In this way repetitive frequency in this novel as one of the techniques which moves the story
forward plays an important role. Iterative and singulative frequencies are observed in some parts of the
story but have a less significant role than repetitive frequency in moving the narrative forward.
Investigating frequency in the play indicates that like the novel, the playwright has used all three types
of frequency iterative, singulative, and repetitive to form his narrative. But since Alireza is still in
the mood of war when he was 17, it is the repetitive frequency which is highlighted more than the other
two. Given what was discussed, the following chart has a comparative look at the elements of time in
the novel and play.
Table 1:

Comparing effects of time in Novel of Erasers and Drama of Sepas

Sepas

Erasers

Time
Effects

Internal analepsis
External analepsis

External analepsis

Order

Internal prolepsis
Deceleration

Deceleration
Descriptive pause

Duration

Singulative
Repetitive
Iterative

Singulative
Repetitive
Iterative

Frequency

7.Conclusion
The comparative study of the novel Erasers and the play Sepas shows that in both works, components
of narrative time such as order, duration, and frequency have an important role in the process of
narration. The results obtained from the study reveal that analepsis, especially external analepsis makes
the most important form of disturbing the order and sequence of the narratives. The greatest function of
these analepses in Erasers is creating suspension and leading to a plural narrative of Daniel Dupont's
murder. In the play these analepsis are used to create the feeling of identification with Alireza, a thirty

or something year old veteran who is still in the war time when he was 17. In Erasers, apart from
analepsis, prolepses have an important role in moving the story forward. These prolepses are used to
create suspension and waiting mood in the novel, something which is not used in the play.
Investigating duration in the novel and the play reveals that in both works deceleration is dominating.
The entire novel narrates 24 hours of the characters' lives and the entire play covers one day in
Alireza's life. Deceleration has reached to its ultimate form in the novel and has created descriptive
pause in the text. It means that the writer has minimized the speed of the text by detailed descriptions
of events. Regarding frequency, both works have used all types of frequency in their narrative pattern
but the domineering frequency is repetitive frequency. In the novel characters repeat Dupont's murder a
lot of times, although it happened once. In the play also Alireza's war memories are recalled a lot by
him. It seems that the main function of this frequency in both works is emphasizing the importance of
events. A summary of the findings depicted in the above chart shows that these works are comparable
in their use of the components of narrative time and time techniques.

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