Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

3.3.The Relation between Time and Space in Modernist Discourse
 
At the beginning of Chapter 3, several general characteristics of the relation between time and 
space in modernist literature were fleetingly mentioned. Indeed, it is worth analyzing more 
conspicuous information related to the two aforementioned issues that is provided by linguists and 
scientists. People always have their experiences at some particular time and place, thus, it seems 
only natural that whenever we analyze something happening we tend to conceptualize the 
background situation comprising the temporal and spatial circumstances of the event as well as 
people and objects positioned in it. Onega and Landa (1996) claim that in fiction, the author and 
the reader are separated in time and space but still they both operate as active participants in an 
interpersonal communicative event which unites them, that is, in a discourse. In the 
multidimensional discourse, both the author and the reader are responsible for coding and decoding 
the meaning, or the embedded message, of a particular piece of fiction. Naturally, all the 
participants in such literary situations, all the discoursal constituents invite the reader to 
convincingly co-operate with the author in constructing a possible world of fiction consisting of a 
conceptual space and time in which all the fictional affairs occur. The reader is disposed to make 
inferences, to draw conclusions from logical reasoning, and to derive certain information from 
textual cues in the discourse. 

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How can the reader contribute to the process of establishing temporal and spatial context in a 
piece of fiction? Indeed, the answer can be based on the claims of psychoanalysis. I adhere to Clara 
Thomson (2002:143) who believes that “society is not a static set of laws instituted in the past […] 
but is rather a growing, changing, developing network of interpersonal experiences and 
behaviour”. Thus, as the psychologist’s words imply, each person in society is a changing 
multidimensional being who is constantly shaping the world and is being shaped by the world as 
well. When reading a work of fiction, a person complements its content by interpreting everything 
from his or her subjective point of view, and it is not strange at all that one and the same piece of 
literature may be understood in totally different ways by different readers. Thomson points out that 
in spite of being subjective and debatable, such personal remarks, presuppositions, or interpretations 
always have a considerable input into the primary original version of the work because they reveal 
the way literary message is echoed and reflected on in human conscience.
Indeed, Verdonk and Weber support Thomson’s ideas and complement them (1995: 87) by 
adding that “like the actual world, the text world of literary fiction has its own complex structure of 
modalities, in which some situations are factual and some are impossible or hypothetical“. As this 
quotation implies, literary works are typically created because of some real events or personal 
writer’s experience. When analyzing a piece of literature, linguists pay a great attention to the 
social, political, educational, religious, philosophical, and literary context in which a work of 
literature was produced because it often leads to a deeper understanding of the work itself. For 
instance, understanding the philosophical innovations in the value system of Modernism can 
provide a greater insight into the depiction of the human mind in Woolf’s novels. Besides, context 
includes wider descriptions of the characters, places, and fundamental meaning in the story, the 
overview of the structure of the presented society and its social norms, and the aspects of people 
making choices that help to lead a life.
In every work of fiction, temporal and spatial boundaries are closely interrelated and play a 
significant role. For instance, in To the Lighthouse, Woolf focuses on the synchronic moments of 
time, and as a result, she frees herself from the limitations of ordinary linear time. She describes 
important events in detail and length, whereas entire years of insignificant experience are simply 
omitted and not mentioned at all, there is no clear distance between the mental images and physical 
action, as in the following extracts from To the Lighthouse (1927): 
(25) …when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure