Classical narratology distinguishes between narrative time and narrated time and prolepses and analepses = between arrangement, pace and frequency. The Middle Ages favoured single-strand, chronological narrating. Of course, compressions, expansions, and insertions still occur. Particular temporal phenomena in medieval narrative include:
• Episodic time (relatively timeless storytelling)
• Mythical prehistory
• Heterochronies (different times in different spaces)
• Paradoxes
• Achronies

Space and time only come into existence through the characters who move within them. Different times are often represented by different spaces = chronotopes. There, space and time are intertwined, and time passes as the story requires. Every story, every form of narrative, has its own chronotope – and in many stories there are several chronotopes. Typical examples from the Middle Ages are e.g. locus amoenus and locus terribilis, fairy islands and other islands, or places such as the "Minnegrotte" (Cave of Love) in Gottfried von Straßburg’s "Tristan".