Time and Narrative

Time and Narrativebuilds on Paul Ricoeur's earlier analysis, inThe Rule of Metaphor, of semantic innovation at the level of the sentence. Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern. Ricoeur finds a "healthy circle" between time and narrative: time is humanized to the extent that it portrays temporal experience. Ricoeur proposes a theoretical model of this circle using Augustine's theory of time and Aristotle's theory of plot and, further, develops an original thesis of the mimetic function of narrative. He concludes with a comprehensive survey and critique of modern discussions of historical knowledge, understanding, and writing from Aron and Mandelbaum in the late 1930s to the work of the Annales school and that of Anglophone philosophers of history of the 1960s and 1970s. "This work, in my view, puts the whole problem of narrative, not to mention philosophy of history, on a new and higher plane of discussion."Hayden White,History and Theory"Superb. . . . A fine point of entrance into the work of one of the eminent thinkers of the present intellectual age."Joseph R. Gusfield,Contemporary SociologyRicoeur, Paul is the author of 'Time and Narrative', published 1990 under ISBN 9780226713328 and ISBN 0226713326.