Towards a theory of Space in Narrative

Article published in the «Poetics Today» — 1984 — Vol. 5 — No. 2 (The Construction of Reality in Fiction) — p. 309-335.The purpose of this study is to present a general model of the structuring of space within the narrative text. The term space is used here to mean specifically the spatial aspects of the reconstructed world. This seems natural and rather obvious, but the term can be applied to the literary text in various ways and is, itself, far from unambiguous. It is.necessary, then, to examine the whole range of problems arising from the use of the term with regard to the literary text. If this task as a whole lies outside the scope of the present study, we can at least clarify one essential aspect of it: the relation- ship between space and time in the narrative text.