2. Colloquial spoken narratives with the «historical present» as characteristic of popular narrative style.
e.g. «It was on the Merritt Parkway just south of New Haven. I was driving along, half asleep, my mind miles away, and suddenly there was a screeching of brakes and I catch sight of a car that had been overtaking me apparently. Well, he doesn’t. He pulls in behind me instead, and it’s then that I notice a police car parked on the side». [Quirk R., 28; 1457].
«I hand the first book to my math. Perhaps it is grammar, perhaps a history or geography. I take a last drawning, look at the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over word Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. [Ch. Dickens, 29; 141].
«She has escaped from my Asylum!»
I cannot say with truth that the terrible inference which those words suggested flashed upon me like a new revelation. Some of the strange questions put to me by the woman in white, after my ill-considered promise to leave her free to act as she pleased, had suggested the conclusion either that she was naturally flighty unsettled, or that some resent shock of terror had disturbed the balance of her faculties. But the idea of absolute insanity, which we all associate with the wery name of an Asylum, had, I can honestly declare, never occured to me, in connection with her.»
[W. Collins, The Woman in White, 2; 21–22].
«Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick-and-span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their plate was new… This evening the Veneerings give a banquet. Eleven leaves in the Twemlow; fouteen in company all told. Four pigeon-breated retainers in plain clothes stand in line the hall… Mrs. Veneering welcomes her sweet Mr. Twemlow. Mr. Vereening we1coms his dear Twemlow…» [Ch Dickens, 5; 7].
«The poetry of Shakespeare was inspiration: indeed, he is not so much an imitator, as instrument of nature; and it is not so just to say that he speaks from her, as that she speaks through him». [Hazlitt, 14; 1].
«Shakespear’s imagination, by identifying itself with the strongest characters in the most trying circumstances, grapp1ed at once with nature, and trampled the littleness of art under his feet: the rapid changes of situations, the wide range of the universe, gave him life and spirit, and afforded full scope to his genius… The author seems all the time to be thinking of his verses, and not of his subject, – not of what his characters would feel, but of what he shall say; and as it must happen in all such cases, he always puts in their mouths those things which they would be the last to think of, and which it shews the greatest ingenuity in him to fink out.» [14; 256].
«I was sitting at the bus stop the other day and this woman was sitting across from me and I see this caterpillar drop behind her and start squiggling its way up to her and I’m just like, «Should I tell her or should I not?» I sat there for five minutes a and watched it get up to her shoe and I decided I can’t tell her. I’ve got to see what happens». [G.YULE, 31; 72].
«This is the only point, I flatter myself, on which we do not agree. I had hope that our sentiments coincoded in every particular, but I must so far differ from you as to think our two youngest daughters uncommonly foolish». [J. Austen, 4; 29].
Another illustrative example:
| «He holds him with his skinny hand» «There was a ship», quoth he. «Hold off! unhand me, grey-bread loon!» Fftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye – The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath his will. The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. | PRESENT PAST PAST PRESENT PAST PRESENT PRESENT PAST PRESENT PAST |
| | [Coleridge S.T., The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 36; 40–41] |
NOTE: These three verses show no less than seven shifts of tense, backwards and forwards, from simple present to simple past.
The change of the tense-forms with one and the same time reference is a most effective stylistic devices in expressive language. The historical present describes the past as if it is happening now: it conveys something of the dramatic immediacy of an eye-witness account. The phenomenon of present/past tense alternation is common in informal spoken narrative, conversations and letter writings.
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