num_pages: 174
description: An important reflection on the twentieth-century preoccupation with time, this new analysis offers perceptive insights on the relationship between narrative and temporal structure and clock time as well as on the influence of time concepts on our expectations about writing and reading fiction. Pauline Beard explores Bergson's duration theory in Faulkner's Sound and Fury, Jung's notions of dream and racial unconscious in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood, Freud's psychoanalysis in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and Italo Calvino's masterful play with all concepts in If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. In each novel, Beard analyzes how the fragmented time structure presents a critical reflection on identity in both fictional and outside worlds. The study provides a challenging introduction to literary criticism as well as a compelling contribution to the study of the modern novel.
language: English
title: A Riddling Thing
titlecomplete: A Riddling Thing
publisher: International Scholars Publications