Chapter 2

Present tense in fiction

Present-tense narrative is expanding its boundaries beyond prototypical narrative conventions. In producing a present-tense narrative, writers give the grammatical tense more diverse and versatile meanings than before, making the distinction between the narrating time and the narrated time unclear. This chapter surveys how the present tense has taken on the function of a narrative tense alongside the past tense in relation to the textual realisation of narrative time. Section 2.1 gives a very brief historical sketch of its usage in English literature from Middle English verse narrative to contemporary present-tense narrative. Section 2.2 illustrates the typical usages of the present tense in past-tense narrative whose narrative premise is set explicitly in past time: the deictic present (2.2.1), the historical present (2.2.2), and the character-deictic present (2.2.3). Their relation to the narrative time frames, and their narrative functions and effects are also discussed. Section 2.3 focuses on the expanded usage of the present tense in contemporary narrative fiction, that is, the narrative present which is used in narrative throughout and functions as the primary narrative tense. This diachronic overview of the narrative use of the present tense will support the more detailed corpus-stylistic analysis of contemporary uses.