Complete the account of the two clocks.
Story time is how long the ______ take; discourse time is how long the ______ takes. Proust expands a mouthful of tea into dozens of pages while years pass in a ______, which makes duration ______ rather than proportional.
Word bank: events · telling · clause · elastic · reader · fixed
Hints
- The first pair is the basic distinction; the second describes what Proust does to it.
- If a moment can take pages and a decade a clause, duration is not proportional.
Show the answer
Story time is how long the events take; discourse time is how long the telling takes. Proust expands a mouthful of tea into dozens of pages while years pass in a clause, which makes duration elastic rather than proportional.
Elasticity is the key property. Once duration is detached from proportion, the amount of space a moment receives becomes a statement about its weight, which is exactly the claim involuntary memory makes about a madeleine.
Practise Ruptures: Proust, Joyce and Woolf
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More questions on Ruptures: Proust, Joyce and Woolf
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