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Time is not only one of the central organising principles of narrrative texts, but it is, more generally, a existential component of human experience and an essential element of human worldmaking. Paul Ricoeur’s intertwining of time, narrative and identity is just one example linking these different areas. This suggests a close relationship between time in narrative and philosophical concepts of time, and it is this connection that we are going to explore in our course with the help of a number of theoretical models that focus on the importance of time in narrative (e.g. Ricoeur) but also on the spatial aspects of time (e.g. Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope or Doreen Massey’s space-time) and on the cultural implications of specific temporal models (the concept of queer time or Sarah Sharma’s power-chronography). Furthermore, we will use these theoretical positions to engage with a selection of literary texts that will give us a better insight into the possibilities of handling time in fiction.
Please get hold of and read the following texts:
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
- Virginia Woolf, Orlando
- Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
- Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child
- specifically for the Lektürekurs: Kate Atkinson, Life after Life
Additional material will be announced/ made available at the beginning of the semester.
Please be prepared for a substantial amount of reading. |
