Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

3.2. Represented and Representational Time 
 
In their study, Onega and Landa distinguish two more kinds of time which are employed in 
works of fiction. According to the theorists(1996:109), “even within the framework of a single 
work, therefore, we generally discover different ratios of represented time (i.e., the duration of a 
projected period in the life of the characters) to representational time (i.e., the time that it takes the 
reader, by the clock, to peruse that part of the text projecting this fictive period).” This statement 
leads us to the premise that indeed, the clear quantitative difference between represented time and 
representational time exists. Here I propose the following figure:  
Figure 5. Represented and Representational Time 
Represented MEANING Representational 
time time 

Figure 5. Represented and Representational Time 

As Onega and Landa explain further (1996: 110), represented time is used to indicate the 
amount of time a certain imaginary activity takes in the work of fiction, while representational time 

---

60 
shows the period of real time which a reader needs to read the text and to reflect of it. 
Representational time can be easily measured by clock. By comparison, represented time is usually 
fragmented, non-linear, as some events in the life of the characters are emphasized and rendered at 
great length, others are simply summarized in a couple of sentences, some details are even 
unmentioned in order to give the readers more possibilities to think, reflect on the text, and to make 
their own conclusions. Representational time does not necessarily stand in direct proportion to 
represented time because the readers each with his own conception of life grasp the essence of the 
text in different ways. The more importance an element carries, the more accurate and detailed its 
picture is. However, this peculiarity is applied more to represented time which describes life of the 
fictional characters. Onega and Landa (1996:111) note that the reader raises many questions and 
wants to know who the centre of interest of the work is, how themes, motifs, characters, and 
incidents coincide, what role every single detail has in the text. Indeed, the text usually does not 
provide explicit answers to these questions, thus, the reader is forced to follow numerous 
implications in order to get the answers.
Although represented and representational times indicate different aspects of time in reality 
and in fiction, they should not be analyzed separately. The two notions are closely interrelated and 
thus, the meaning of a literary work can be achieved only by combining them. According to Onega 
and Landa (1996:112), during the period of Modernism, there was a tendency to over-estimate the 
importance of represented time that focused on the narrative in fiction. On the one hand, it was 
natural because modernist writers aimed to carry the analysis of human inner world and human 
mind the mechanism of which was based on the subjective personal concept of time. On the other 
hand, the external temporal context, or representational time, added a lot to the value of a literary 
work because it provided a better understanding of the message that work carried. For instance, in 
Woolf’s fiction, the psychological analysis of human mind is carried, thus, represented time has a 
lot of importance. To ground these statements, let us now consider the following examples from To 
the Lighthouse (1927) which describes Lily s memories concerning Mrs Ramsay. 
(23) Mrs Ramsay saying ‘Life stand still here’; Mrs Ramsay making of the moment