ABSTRACT
J. Hillis Miller demonstrates how the relationships of meaning within a narrative line are based on catachresis that is, on constant displacement of meaning from one sign to another by means of intense and subtle analysis. His contention is that narrative allegorizes meaning, constantly deferring the possibility of unequivocal expression. One must distinguish sharply, however, between effects of discontinuity, spaces or hiatuses between segments of a narrative line, and true disturbances of the line that make it curve back on itself, recross itself, tie itself in knots. Narrative is the allegorizing along a temporal line of the perpetual displacement from immediacy. Allegory in this sense, however, expresses the impossibility of expressing unequivocally, and so dominating, what is meant by experience or by writing. The impasse of narrative analysis is a genuine double blind alley.
