Frequency
To attend to frequency in regard to narrative temporal relations is to compare the number of times an event is narrated to the number of times it is imagined to have occurred. Singulative narration occurs when what happens once in a story appears but once in its discourse. Moments of iterative narration are meant to represent once what is to be imagined to have actually occurred several times. Finally, repeating narration narrates a single instance more than once.
Singulative narration is, of course, the most common type of narrative frequency. The singular mention, in Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela, of Syrena's departure for her apprenticeship corresponds, for instance, with its singulative occurrence (57-58). Examples of repeating narration can be found in Samuel Richardson's Pamela. Early in her time held against her will at Mr. B's Lincolnshire estate, Pamela narrates in her journal an attempt to escape: "I clamber'd up upon the Ledges of the Door . . . and down came I, and received such a Blow upon my Head, with one of the Bricks, that it quite stunn'd me; and I broke my Shins and my Ancle besides" (171). Later in the narrative discourse, having had to relinquish her papers to Mr. B., Pamela recounts a second time, but in a new journal, her singular escape attempt: "How, in trying to climb over the Door, I tumbled down, and was piteously bruised; the Bricks giving way, and tumbling upon me" (236). |