ABSTRACT
Balancing Immediacy and Displacement: Local Actions to Restore the Vividness of a Lost World
Without displacement, past worlds will seem to the reader not strikingly different in kind or degree from the world of the present. Without immediacy, past worlds collapse into the stereotypic flatness of the English past tense generic, happened. Rousing stories of human beings flatten into a limp “happened” that omits the compelling detail. Narrative history challenges writers to create representations of striking displacement punctuated by equally striking immediacy. How do writers coordinate these independent elements within a single text? We can best answer this question by first examining the local actions of writers working to create each effect on its own.
