“Telling in Time” Extended

Abstract

Temporality has long been recognized as a defining trait of narrative. This article introduces new concepts, methods, and arguments to analyze the relationships between represented and representational timelines for a transmedia narratology with a strong focus on emotions, rethinking such fundamental concepts as complication, resolution, and illustration. Since Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1766) distinguished the temporal arts like poetry, where signs are consecutive, from the spatial arts like painting, where signs are juxtaposed, the latter have been considered to be limited when it comes to conveying stories autonomously. Opposing this point of view, this article explains how monochronic pictures can convey timelines by relying on the depiction of traces, as well as an appeal to anthropological and cultural knowledge. It then shows how some monochronic pictures intended as illustrations sometimes convey stories autonomously. The author argues based on a choice of photographs that inducing suspense or curiosity is possible even through a monochronic picture. The article also shows how single pictures induce experiences of duration or instantaneity, concluding that single monochronic pictures can convey essential story events in a predetermined order and reliably convey the timeline of these events. This implies that such single pictures can be narratives even according to narrow definitions of the concept.