TEMPORAL ANALYSIS
We can analyze the aspect of time
from two points of views: the internal time of the hypertext, which corresponds
to the development of the events that take place in it, and the real time,
which means how long has it took me to produce my paper.
About the internal time we
can say that the author doesn’t set the poem in any specific date but the fact
that
Alice in Flatland is a visual poem
composed by eight parts of different length. Now I have sorted out all the time
references I have found in this hypertext:
**The
verbal tenses used are present tenses for the dialogs between the characters
and past tenses for the narrator’s voice:
"What's this?" she gasped, "I'm still the same,
just like the world from which I came."
But then she thought (by now a pro
at such riddles and how they go),
I once knew height but now it's
gone."
I read today the world is winking.
I read before that time grows old
**use
of future simple, it’s an immediate future:
He smiled. "But what I know I'll share
with you if you will too. That's fair."
Alice paused then asked him, "Tell
me
what you know of 'up' and 'down' Tree."
Then, with no self-pity
she said, with quiet dignity,
I heard a song the other day
sung by seven men in chains.
When they'd finished they were led
back inside their cell again
When they're freed, will they still sing
just as before or will it ring
**use of simple future,
although we don’t know exactly when it will take place:
untrue to them and will they do
something else that's just as true?
then
you gobble up its shape
and tell me that there's still a cake!
There's always another side that we don't see.
I sometimes think she gave me sight.
You win/you lose--they're in disguise.
Now I see with five red eyes.
Gawd, I talk too much.
But it's been such a long time
since I had anyone to talk to.
a sort of star who never saw
what she had made for one and all
"Yes. I have had some hint of this.
My life's a book I sometimes miss.
This happens every now and then--
I'm plopped down in a foreign land.
So far
so good. I'm not dead.
And you're not screaming for my head.
"That's what they all say!" wept the Tree.
"You are old--no longer free!"
"Really, Tree, sometimes I think you weep and rhyme
simply just to pass the time.
"T.V.? T.V.?" screamed the Tree,
"I have never heard of T.V.!"
"Sometimes we think we're growing
bold
when in fact we're growing cold.
** it
refers to a present tense (now/ in this moment they are making lots of money):
Yes," said
"they are making lots of money.
"Oh Tree! Can I ask you
a question before you sleep?"
I read it such a long time ago
And soon was snoring fitfully
no trace of his garrulity.
I hope you don't live in the past
And that you find your love at last.
What if the past is yet to come
And the future is already done?
Mother? Wife? Lover? Friend?
O Tree, is everything all at once, in the end?
Still,
we established
that it may not be
And for all your age
you're still quite wild.
In fact you sometimes act
a rather bratty
little child!"
impossible!
The real time I spent in
reading and comprehending the whole hypertext was about an hour while carrying
out my detailed analysis, preparing and distributing the different parts of the
work took me much more time.
© Alice In Flatland, 1992 by Jim
Andrews.
[ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ALICE IN FLATLAND]
[TEMPORAL ANALYSIS]
Página creada y actualizada por grupo
"mmm".
Para cualquier cambio, sugerencia,etc. contactar
con: asco@uv.es
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
Universitat de València Press
Creada: 5/12/2008 Última Actualización:
5/12/2008