Time and Literature

The first anthology to provide a synthesis of recent scholarship on how time shapes our thinking about literature.

Thomas M. Allen (Edited by)

9781108422758, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 March 2018

352 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'… this is a well-edited, thought-provoking and highly diverse collection, which offers much material for the literary scholar but also addresses issues and raises questions which will be of interest to a wider audience.' Irmtraud Huber, KronoScope

Time and Literature features twenty essays on topics from aesthetics and narratology to globalisation and queer temporalities, and showcases how time studies, often referred to as 'the temporal turn', cut across and illuminate research in every field of literature, as well as interdisciplinary approaches drawing upon history, philosophy, anthropology, and the natural sciences. Part one, Origins, addresses fundamental issues that can be traced back to the beginnings of literary criticism. Part two, Developments, shows how thinking about Time has been crucial to various interpretive revolutions that have impacted literary theory. Part three, Application, illustrates the centrality of temporal theorising to literary criticism in a variety of contemporary approaches, from ecocriticism and new materialisms to media and archive studies. The first anthology to provide a synthesis of recent scholarship on the temporality of literary language from across different national and historical periods, Time and Literature will appeal to academic researchers and interested laypersons alike.

Introduction Thomas Allen
Part I. Origins: 1. Time and aesthetics Michael Clune
2. Reading in time Mark Currie
3. Time and genre Rebecca Bushnell
4. Time and theatre Matthew Wagner
5. Sacred and secular Sue Zemka
6. Ecologies of time Tobias Menely
Part II. Development: 7. Literature, time, and scientific revolutions Jocelyn Holland
8. Untimely objects: temporal studies and the new materialism Nick Yablon
9. Temporalities of writing: time and difference after structuralism Ian Maclachlan
10. Time and media J. K. Barret
11. Technology and time: clocks, time machines, and speculation Charles Tung
12. Historicism Jeffrey Insko
Part III. Application: 13. Time and the literary archive Michelle Sizemore
14. Time, empire, and nation Edward Larkin
15. Race, writing, and time Daylanne English
16. Time and the literature of globalization Adam Barrows
17. Time and the return to form: reading Nabokov, reading Poe Cindy Weinstein
18. Narrative and narratology Jesse Matz
19. Queer temporalities: space-ing time and the subject Michelle Wright
20. In the spiral of history: gestational temporalities and indigenous women's writings on the knowledge of sexual difference Julia Emberley.

Subject Areas: Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]