Treatment of Time in the Picture of Dorian Gray

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María Constanza Fáez Blanco Professor Michael Wilson The XIXth Century Novel - LET1747 24 June 2013 Treatment of Time in The Picture of Dorian Gray Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray can be analyzed from various points of view, being the aesthetic and moral aspects of it the favorite ones for literary criticism. However, these aspects rely to a considerable extent on Wilde's narrative techniques, even the subtlest ones. Among these, it is hard not to notice the peculiar and variable treatment of time in the novel and leads us to wonder: how does it contribute to the story itself? To answer this question, this paper will thoroughly analyze Wilde's treatment of time throughout the novel and study its vital contribution to the plot and the development of the character of Dorian Gray. Firstly, "treatment of time" should be referred to as "narrative speed", which according to Prince, is "the relationship between the duration of the narrated --- the (approximate) time the events recounted go on or are thought to go on --- and the length of the narrative (in words, lines, or pages, for instance)" (qtd. in Rojas 48). Regarding this, there are five means of narration duration that will be considered for this analysis: scene, summary, slow-down, pause, and ellipsis. A scene "coordinates the duration of story and narrational times so that they appear equivalent" (Cohan and Shires 88), which is why it is most often used in dialogue; a summary "condenses time in the narration so that it is less than story time" (87); slow-down "occurs at any point when the time of the narration exceeds that of the story" (88) by means of recounting events in slow-motion; in a pause the narrative time is infinitely greater than the story time since it "continues and that of the story ceases, for instance in character description, commentary, exposition, and direct addresses to a
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