The clock is grey with dust in the land where time is lost: time as a narrative dimension in The Clockwork Crow series

This paper deals with the concept of time as an integral part of any narrative. As such, based on a narratological viewpoint, time is considered at the level of the ‘story,’ as a world-constitutive dimension that “frames the setting for events, characters, and action and is itself shaped by these elements.” (Scheffel et al., 2013, para. 12) The investigation focuses on literary narratives, bearing in mind that time expresses the shape of events in the story and that in time fantasies, as defined by Clute & Grant (1999), time shapes itself around and gives significance to human and supernatural events. Thus, this study sets out to explore time in a fantasy text set in a known historical period, the Victorian era, that also deals with the otherworld, in this case, Fairyland, focusing on its distinct rules of time. The case study, The Clockwork Crow trilogy by Catherine Fisher, is presented as a text that deals with notions of historical and supernatural time and is heavily influenced by Celtic and Welsh lore. Through a detailed study, this work shows how the temporal settings and alternative time representations inevitably influence the story while also being shaped by it.