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One of the major text-oriented movements of the twentieth
century, structuralism interests itself in the structural
patterns of literary works. Gerard Genette, renowned French
structuralist, examined the complex relations between the
narrative and the story it tells. Among others, he dealt with
tense,which works with the relationship between the time of the
story (histoire) and the time of the text (recit). Thus he order concerns
the relationship between the succession of events in the story
and their arrangement in the text, duration has to do with distortion of narrative speed, while frequency denotes the
relationship between the number of times an event appears in the
story and the number of limes it is narrated or mentioned in the
text (Chapter 1).
Rooted in the aforementioned tenets, this study examines time
order, i.e.order relations, in three novels of Northern Sotho
author 0 K Matsepe, viz LeSitaphiri (Chapter 2), meqokqo ya Bjoko
(Chapter 3) and Letsofalela (Chapter 4). By reconstructing the
story from the text in each case, the remarkable extent to which
Matsepe deviated from linear chronology was revealed The
investigation disclosed numerous discrepancies between story-time
and text-time, in Genette's terms known as anachrolis: analepsis
which implies a "return to the past" and prolepsis denoting "a
leap into the future". All three works begin in medias res, which
means that the starting point of the text is not the starting
point of the story.
Through his abundant use of analepsis Matsepe manages to blur the
distinction between past and present, creating a literary
portrait of simultaneity and timelessness, a reality, yet
different from the real world. In a world fraught with magic,
turmoil and strife, peace can only be enjoyed when the
inhabitants have moved to a new locality. In so doing, Matsepe hints at another world as the eventual peaceful destination of
man. The few instances of prolepsis similarly stress that longing
for a better dispensation: on earth man is but a sojourner on his
way somewhere (Chapter 5). |
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