Browsing by Subject "Time in literature"

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
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    Burning with Temporality: Postmodernism and the Modern Aesthetic in Cosmopolis
    (2013) Whitcomb, David; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
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    Connecting Time in Proust and Stoppard
    (1995) Irwin, Amanda E.
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    Depictions of Time in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Jorge Luis Borges’ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
    (2011) Breakstone, Lauren; Burshatin, Israel
    Do the ideas about time in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, and the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, by Jorge Luis Borges, conflict, coincide, or both? Are these views presented as positive, negative, or both? This paper aims to show that Vonnegut’s and Borges’ ideas about time in these works coincide, and that they present these ideas negatively. Both texts show how time contributes to or constructs one’s understanding of reality, including one’s emotional responses to that reality. Billy Pilgrim and the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five, and the characters promoting Tlön in Borges’ story, are all trying to utilize their views on time to create a positive emotional affect in themselves and others, but for different reasons.
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    Let Her Wear Suits: Normative Physical Appearance and Temporality in ​Fun Home
    (2020) Hanss, Julie; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    Fun Home is a complex, gripping, and thought-provoking graphic novel. This autobiography, follows the coming of age story of author Alison Bechdel as she navigates the complicated and confusing relationship that she and her father share. Throughout the novel Alison and her father, Bruce, deeply disagree about physical appearance. Bruce wants to uphold a "normal" family appearance, mainly because he is a closeted gay man, while Alison craves to be different, as she is exploring her sexuality. Through analyzing the graphic form, this thesis examines moments in which normative physical appearance is adhered to, challenged, and/or destroyed. Throughout this analysis it becomes clear that these moments are also ones in which a normative or linear sense of time is destroyed.
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    Still Time: Textual Consciousness and Photography in Nabokov's Ada
    (2015) Odekirk, Connor; McGrane, Laura
    I have chosen to write my thesis on Vladimir Nabokov’s late novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. In my thesis I invoke Henri Bergson’s treatise on duration, Time and Free Will as well as Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, among other theorists and criticism to examine tropes of time and narrative forms of memory, such as memoir, photography, and voice recording, in the novel. Photography is a prominent image and theme in this text, which is itself fictionally structured in the form of memoir. Photographs appear both as images that both exist within and are also narrated by the text. They are also forms of memory that the memoir archives within its narrative. They are both subject of the text as well as a function of the narrative. In my thesis I examine the protagonist’s (Van Veen’s) philosophy on time – a theory that is both a reflection and recalibration of Bergson’s Duration. I then analyze the existence of Van’s memoir – including the photographs – within the text both to question his theory regarding time and also to show its fundamental flaws. Interestingly, some of the photographs that I examine in the novel appear earlier in Van’s memoir, as remembered, narrated events rather than posed or candid photographs. It is not until later in the text, and, by virtue of the memoir’s chronology, later in Van’s life, that photographs of specific, already-narrated events surface. The discrepancy between what Van remembers and the images that he sees for the first time in the photographs, in addition to seeing the physical photographs for the first time, complicate the temporal structure of the text as well as Van’s relation to Time and memory. It is through such complications that I explore the temporal complexities of Ada.
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    "Strolling toward nowhere": Urban Space and Narrative Time in Zadie Smith's NW
    (2020) St Onge, Kaden; Reckson, Lindsay Vail, 1982-
    Smith's experimental style reflects not just a different way of representing space and narrative time, but also a different way of understanding how people and spaces change within a singular place. The narrative is presented through depictions of geographical space rather than through a linear depiction of time, and the space of the city and the act of moving through that city is reflected within the text itself. Just as the novel itself is only experienced through the "routing" act of writing and/or reading, the city is only experienced through various routes of movement in both time and space. This thesis explores the relationship between the characters' mnemonic relationship with NW in terms of how they move through the temporalized and historicized space of the city and how these aspects interact with the novel as a text through theories on the navigation of space and narrative. It begins by looking at the structure of the novel as a whole and its position within broader realist and postmodernist traditions. It analyzes instances of movement and routing within the novel, showing how this movement reflects a dynamic definition of space, time, and the representation of memory. It also views how the characters' individual experiences with Northwest London affect their development throughout the novel to show how the action of the novel and the characters' development exists as an additional layer of history within NW as a space.
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    Time and Surmise in MacBeth
    (2010) Hughes, Sean; Benston, Kimberly W.
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    Time and the Self in Seneca’s De Brevitate Vitae
    (2013) Walter, Benjamin Z.; Baertschi, Annette M.
    This paper attempts to find the relationship between the self and time in De Brevitate Vitae. It is argued that Seneca’s advice to his addressee to withdrawal from public office in order to avoid the “brevity of life” is, following Stoic reasoning, an actual and not merely rhetorical extension of life. The Introduction explains why the self is relevant in Senecan scholarship, using the Letters as well as brief analysis by Long and Edwards. A definition of the Stoic self is constructed using relevant scholarship by Gill, Inwood, and Long. This definition is contrasted with at least one modern definition of the self. The definition put forward is that the Senecan self is unified, self-reflexive, goal-oriented, and rational. De Brevitate Vitae is examined and the conclusion is drawn that Seneca suggests that reclusion from public life can actually extend time and cure the “brevity of life”. This statement is shown to be explicable only in light of the active participation of the Stoic self. Reclusion from politics signifies philosophical and moral development (i.e. the development of the self). Life is defined as the amount of time one owns. The principle metaphor of time in the dialogue is that of time as a spendable commodity. The fact that time is spendable implies the ownership of the self over life (the specific amount of time that we own). It is argued that only a developed self has the ability to control the flow of time. The consequence of this is that life is extended. Therefore, using the logic of Seneca’s Stoicism, the withdrawal from public affairs actually lengthens life. The conclusion contains a brief overlook of the possible historical and political context surrounding the dialogue, as well as a summary of the broader implications of the dialogue.