Throughout this study two rules have emerged regarding the process of recollection: firstly, that the past is crucial in shaping responses to a present situation and, secondly, in order for any recollection to be successful, that past must be crafted to fit with a current set of circumstances. Certain characters in the previous chapter deliberately denied any such opportunities by imposing boundaries between the present and “true” past or restricting the creative opportunities that were available to form a reconnection with the past. However, when we talk of adapting the present in line with the past, the silent understanding is that we are negotiating between two planes of experience. Indeed, if we were were living in the perpetual present there would perhaps be no need to recollect at all as every piece of information would be available to the remembering subject in the atemporal moment of “now.” This, of course, is an impossibility. Time is always moving on and, as such, earlier events become stored as memories, ordered (hopefully) in a pattern of chronological occurrence. Time can be seen as the enemy of memory in its distancing of episodes, coupled with the constant stream of present moments which might threaten to occlude past memories (as was discussed in Chapter 4). Yet, it is equally possible to appreciate time is a necessary and helpful force during the process of recollection. It allows the subject to cognise that things have indeed changed during a given period and such awareness can actually structure the act of remembering.

Romances, as episodic journeys, are already embodiments of time's progression and in Chapter 4 this was described in terms of a ritual that would conclude by returning the hero to court, reuniting two lovers, or restoring an heir to his lands. Time in romance, however, is also linear. Characters and themes are developed during the course of a tale and so, at the end, there is often the sense that things have indeed changed over a given period.