Chronoschisms
Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism

An analysis of the way postmodern novels respond to changes in the experience of time.

Ursula K. Heise (Author)

9780521554862, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 August 1997

300 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.1 cm, 0.53 kg

In Chronoschisms Ursula Heise explores the way developments in transportation, communication and information technology have led to the emergence of a different culture of time in Western societies. The radical transformation in our understanding and experience of time has also profoundly affected the structure of the novel. Heisse argues that postmodern novels are centrally concerned with the possibility of experiencing time in an age when temporal horizons have been drastically foreshortened. Drawing on theories of postmodernism and narratology, she shows how postmodern narratives break up the concept of plot into a spectrum of contradictory story lines. The coexistence of these competing experiences of time then allows new conceptions of history and posthistory to emerge, and opens up comparisons with recent scientific approaches to temporality. This wide-ranging study offers readings of postmodernist theory and fresh insight into the often vexed relationship between literature and science.

Introduction
Part I. Chronoschisms: 1. From soft clocks to hardware: narrative and the postmodern experience of time
Part II. Time Forks and Time Loops: 2. Number, chance and narrative: Julio Cortázar's Rayuela
3. 'Repetitions, contradictions and omissions': Robbe-Grillet's Topologie d'une cité fantôme
4. Print time: text and duration in Beckett's How It Is
Part III. Posthistories: 5. ?t: time's assembly in Gravity's Rainbow
6. Effect predicts cause: Brooke-Rose's Out
Epilogue: Schismatrix
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary theory [DSA]