This definition is merely a concise and direct statement of a narratological tradition of associating narrative and temporal change. My discussion in this chapter has suggested that in addition to temporal change, that narrative also necessarily involves the representation of spatial change—either as an actual movement, or as an imagined or hoped-for movement. A text that is spatially static is no more a narrative than a text in which nothing changes. It is in this sense, I think, that wecan read Darko Suvin’s observation about the importance of spatiotemporal setting in distinguishing narrative and metaphor. Considering border cases like the parable (“The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed . . . ”), Suvin argues that “The vehicle of this parable is a minimal story involving precise space and time, whose characteristic is the deployment of hyperbole and paradox by which the least shall become the greatest given some preconditions.” 34 According to Suvin, ametaphor becomes a parable and thus a narrative only when it is located within a specific space and time: