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

However, it is not simply the case that we cannot tell how fast (or whether)
time is passing at any moment in “Time Passes.” Rather, “Time Passes” overlays
multiple levels of summary, all moving at different speeds. First, there is the section’s
initial conceit: the passage of ten years is the passage of one night. It is this basic
conceit that binds the novel together: because they are figured as an evening and the
following morning, “The Window” and “The Lighthouse” obey the Aristotelian unity
of time. We are allowed to see the whole of the novel as one dramatic action—except
for “Time Passes,” which is outside that action, an interlude that by its very betweenness
enables that unity of action. Second, there is the conceit of the passage of
seasons: “Time Passes” moves through winter, spring, summer, and back to early fall.
In this conceit, one year passes. Third, there is the real passage of story-time, the ten
years between “The Window” and “The Lighthouse.” Since so much of “Time
Passes” is concerned with the narration of the passage of a night or the passage of the
seasons, these slower speeds cannot be easily dismissed, even if they must ultimately
be deemed metaphorical. Rather, they are metaphorical only within the novel as a
whole: within “Time Passes” and its unique discourse space, they are narrated. “Time
Passes,” therefore, while it contains passages of indefinite speed, and otherwise varies
its speed throughout, as a whole is composed of three orders of speed operating
simultaneously. As Herman argues that novels which encourage the reader to imagine
multiple temporal orderings of the same events are polychronous, I suggest that
“Time Passes” should be considered a polytempic text (Herman, Universal 75).
“Time Passes,” therefore, serves as both a linking and dividing middle which,
through its differences from the text which surrounds it, challenges not only the
164