Temporal Conflict in the Reading Experience

Abstract

Analogous to our visual perspective, we also have a temporal perspective spanning beyond the present singular point in time. In literary narratives, the characters in the story have a visual perspective on the represented world whereas the reader has a temporal perspective on the narrative as such. The reader’s temporal perspective is a bit eschewed to the represented visual perspective in that there is a temporal distance between the represented events and the reader’s point of view. This temporal distance can be exploited aesthetically to create a conflict between the representation and the presentation of the literary work of art. In a vein similar to the ‘conflict’ in Husserlian picture consciousness, there is a temporal conflict in reading consciousness that will be discussed here with reference to literary examples from Flaubert and Kafka.