ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

presentation in “Time Passes.” In this title, not only is there no human or human-like
subject, but there is also no suggestion of causally-linked events—or even specific
events at all.
Nevertheless, what we may think of as traditional narrative events do occur in
“Time Passes,” and with them some broader notion of large-scale personal and
national history. However, these events are largely confined to the briefest summary.
Passages contained in brackets inform the reader of the deaths of major characters
and set the passage of time within the context of World War I. Susan Stanford
Friedman echoes Woolf’s definition of the poetic in her contrasting definitions of
lyric and narrative: “Narrative is understood to be a mode that foregrounds a
sequence of events that move dynamically in space and time. Lyric is understood to
be a mode that foregrounds a simultaneity, a cluster of feelings or ideas that project a
gestalt in stasis. Where narrative centers on story, lyric focuses on state of mind,
although clearly each mode contains elements of the other” (“Lyric” 164). In this
sense, “Time Passes” serves as narrative against the surrounding lyric moment. For
Friedman, then, in “Time Passes” “the power of time, death, of linear narrative
horrifyingly reasserts itself” within the broader lyrical structure of the novel (“Lyric”
173). However, if traditional narrative consists of a sequence of causally-connected
events with human subjects (if not agents), it is worth noting just how disconnected
the bracketed events are—both from each other and from the bulk of “Time Passes.”
With the exception of an early mention of Carmichael late at night, they all occur far
away from the house (to whose environs the rest of the narrative is confined). And the
causal connection is not between the particular events, but between each individual
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