Temporal traps: simultaneous phase and narrative transitions in Conrad

Abstract

The article surveys the device of simultaneous phase and its subdivisions, as a category of narrative transition within the larger rubric of sequential dynamics. Nineteenth-century examples, from Gaskell and Flaubert to Hardy and James, display various overt types, often anticipating cinematic techniques, while other categories of transition, in Maupassant and Moore, feature both overt and covert forms of ellipsis. Two decades prior to Joyce’s large-scale exploitation of multiple simultaneous phase, in his ‘Wandering Rocks’ chapter of Ulysses, Conrad supplies a striking instance of false simultaneous phase in his short story, Typhoon, of 1903. Its covert effect is confirmed only in retrospect by the delayed presentation of temporal data, and its juxtaposition of different temporal levels is apparent only to a specialist reader. Not only does the example bridge the technical devices employed by the earlier and later Conrad, but it raises intriguing questions about reader expectations, competence and the value of the retrospective illumination of texts.