Time in Twenty-First-Century British and American Literature

£45.99

Time in Twenty-First-Century British and American Literature

Out of Sync

Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000

Author: Sonia Front

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Collection: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature

Language: English

Published by: Routledge

Published on: 20th June 2025

Format: LCP-protected ePub

ISBN: 9781040380383


Introduction

This book investigates representations of time in twenty‑first‑century Anglo‑American literature. In the digital era, characterized by a new regime of time, fiction offers revisions of prevalent, oppressive notions of time that can serve as productive political strategies to reclaim the agency of the subject.

Content Overview

This book discusses literary texts that craft innovative temporal structures out of sync with the new time logic: suspended temporality (Chapter 1); time as a conflation of phenomenological experience and cosmological laws (Chapter 2); previewing the future (Chapter 3); and networked memory (Chapter 4).

Proposed Temporalities

The proposed politically productive temporalities, such as deep presence or resonance, compatibilism, contingency, and the use of narrative as a chronologizing strategy, ground a vision of change and suggest a way out of the crisis of time.

Conclusion

Identifying new timeframes in twenty‑first‑century fiction by an array of writers, this book demonstrates that literature remains a valid medium for theorizing and representing time.

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