Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2001

Publication Title

Anales Galdosianos

First Page

299

Last Page

306

Additional Publication URL

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmc76671

Abstract

In his book, Narrative and Freedom, Gary Saul Morson uses the term "sideshadowing" to identify a set of devices-operating in the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky-that are used to counter the closed view of time associated with another term, "foreshadowing." According to Morson, this temporal closure is the result of the backward causation of foreshadowing. That is, in foreshadowing something happens because something else is going to happen. Instead of being caused by a prior event, it is caused by a subsequent one. That means that the future is already set, at least to the extent that it can send signs backwards. Thus, options are closed off and time becomes a single line leading to that existing future. Of course, in a novel-unlike in real life-the future is, in fact, already set, but by calling the reader's attention to the already written nature of narrative, foreshadowing conveys temporal openness by approximating the multiplicity of possibilities and potential resolutions inherent in real life.

Rights

Link leads to full text provided by Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes

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