Time correlation of causative situations in fiction (a case study of S. Faulks' novel "A week in December")

The article deals with time correlation represented at the level of causative relations within a literary text. Unlike the traditional approach to the study of causative meaning on the level of one proposition (situation), according to which the cause always precedes the effect, the present work is an attempt to demonstrate that temporal correlation of interrelated situations can vary depending on the author's intention on the poly-propositional (polysituational) level, i. e. the text level. Accordingly, causation is considered at the mono-situational level as an element for constructing the plot of a literary text (point causation); at the level of the plot as a linear relationship situation (polysituational level); and at the level of the author, where all the plot lines conform to a particular component of the idea of the text.