© 2008 The AuthorsJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Literature Compass Teaching & Learning Guide, Literature Compass 6/1 (2009): 244–248, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00589.x

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Making Time: Narrative Temporality in Twentieth-Century Literature and Theory

Brian Richardson and Jennifer WellmanUniversity of Maryland

This guide accompanies the following article: Brian Richardson, ‘Making Time: Narrative Temporality in Twentieth-Century Literature and Theory’. Literature Compass 3.3 (2006): 603–12. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00321.x

Authors’ Introduction

Poised at the beginning of the twentieth century, F. T. Marinetti claimed in his1909 ‘Futurist Manifesto’:

We are on the furthest promontory of the ages! ... Why should we be lookingback over our shoulders, if what we desire is to smash down the mysteriousdoors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are living alreadyin the realms of the Absolute, for we have already created infinite, omnipresentspeed. (14)

Scholars have long noted that major scientific discoveries during the late nine-teenth and early twentieth centuries, including Einstein’s theory of relativity, aswell as new technological innovations such as the railway, the telegraph, and thecinema brought into question and, for some, radically altered the traditionalWestern concept of time as stable and objectively measurable. This change isreflected in the work of early modernist writers, who consciously exploredalternative notions of time, and avant-garde and postmodern writers furtherextended these experiments. By tracing how these early literary experiments withtime developed over the course of the twentieth century, this article not onlyreflects the persistence of our interest in questions of time but also opens forconsideration the question of how literature and literary theory have activelycontributed to our still changing conception of time and how we perceive it.

Authors Recommend:

Karen Newman, Jay Clayton, and Marianne Hirsch, eds., Time and the Literary(New York: Routledge, 2002).

This edition contains essays on philosophical, cybernetic, and scientific conceptsof time and their applications to literature. Especially recommended is Clayton’sessay on ‘Genome Time’.

C. S. Patrides, ed., Aspects of Time (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976).

© 2008 The AuthorsJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Literature Compass Teaching & Learning Guide 245

A worthwhile collection and Richard Schechner’s essay, ‘There’s Lots of Timein Godot’ is very useful.

Ricardo Quinones, The Renaissance Discovery of Time (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1972).Quinones describes the historical, social, and technological backgrounds to theunderstanding of time in the West since the Renaissance. This provides a goodlead in to Stephen Kern’s account of conceptions of time since 1880, as well asway in to Shakespearean chronologies.

Brian Richardson, ‘ “Time is Out of Joint”: Narrative Models and the Tempo-rality of the Drama’, Poetics Today 8 (1987): 299–310.Richardson examines time in drama.

Ursula Heise, Chronoschims: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997).This is the best book-length study of postmodern temporality.

Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man (Santa Rasa, CA: Black Sparrow Press,1993 [1927]).Lewis provides a dissenting (indeed, eccentric) contemporary response to whathe called ‘the time children’.

David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1986).Carr gives a suggestive approach to time in historical narratives from the perspectiveof European philosophy (especially Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty).

Online Materials:

http://www.studyoftime.orgThe International Society for the Study of TimeThis link will allow you to access their journal, KronoScope, papers from theirconference, and reviews of recent books on time.

http://narrative.georgetown.edu/International Society for the Study of NarrativeThe ISSN is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of narrative invarious kinds of media. Visit their Web site for access to the ISSN’s journal,Narrative, teaching resources, and wiki.

http://www.columbia.edu/~bwr2001/papers/selectivity.pdfBruce Robbins, ‘Temporizing: Time and Politics in the Humanities and HumanRights’. boundary 2 32.1 (Spring 2005): 191–208.Robbins’s article discusses the concept of time within the context of issues ofethics, forgiveness, and restitution. Exploring the intersection between differingconcepts of temporality, human rights discourse, and the humanities, he arguesin favour of what he calls a ‘ “progressive” temporality’ that makes recovery andreconciliation possible.

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.htmlThe Po-Mo Page: Postmodern, Postmodernism, Postmodernity

246 Literature Compass Teaching & Learning Guide

© 2008 The AuthorsJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Created by Martin Irvine at Georgetown University, this site offers an explana-tion of the two major movements in Western literature in the twentieth century,modernism and postmodernism, including changing notions of narrative andnarrative form.

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/andrews__stir_fry_texts.htmlInteresting Digital Experiments with Time and Narrative: Stir Fry Texts by JimAndrewsStir Fry Texts is a digital work of art based on postmodern experiments withtextual and visual ‘cut ups’, similar to those produced by William S. Burroughsand Salvador Dali.

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/holeton__frequently_asked_questions_about_hypertext.htmlFrequently Asked Questions about ‘Hypertext’ by Richard HoletonUsing a narrative model similar to that of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Holeton’sFrequently Asked Questions about ‘Hypertext’ requires readers to reconstruct thechronology of a story from episodes recounted in critical commentary on aprimary text.

http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/The Agrippa Files by William GibsonSponsored by University of California, Santa Barbara, this site is an online archivededicated to William Gibson’s Agrippa (a Book of the Dead), a digitally storedpoem that self-erases as it is read, offering insight into the relationship betweentime, memory and media.

Sample Syllabus:

Material for a Course on Time and Narrative (or Segments on Time andNarrative in a class on Modern Fiction or Critical Theory):

Course Introduction:Brian Richardson, ‘Making Time: Narrative Temporality in Twentieth-CenturyLiterature and Theory’. Literature Compass 3.3 (2006): 603–12, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00321.x

Fiction, Novellas and Novels:Laurence Sterne, Tristram ShandyGerard de Nerval, SylvieVirginia Woolf, To the LighthouseVirginia Woolf, OrlandoWilliam Faulkner, The Sound and the FuryAlejo Carpentier, ‘Journey Back to the Source’Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Long ViewMaurice Blanchot, Death SentenceAlain Robbe-Grillet, JealousyKurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse FiveSalman Rushdie, Midnight’s ChildrenMartin Amis, Time’s Arrow

© 2008 The AuthorsJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Literature Compass Teaching & Learning Guide 247

Fiction, Stories:Ambrose Bierce, ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek’, Collected StoriesJorge Luis Borges, ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’, ‘The Secret Miracle’, LabyrinthsVladimir Nabokov, ‘The Circle’, Collected StoriesIlse Aichinger, ‘Mirror Story’, The Bound Man and Other StoriesPhilip K. Dick, ‘A Little Something for Us Tempunauts’, Best of Philip K. DickItalo Calvino, ‘t zero’, t zero and Other StoriesJeanette Winterson, ‘The Poetics of Sex’, The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short StoriesAlan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

Theory:Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’Gerard Genette, ‘Order, Duration, and Frequency’Paul Ricoeur, ‘Narrative Time’Robyn Warhol, ‘Queering the Marriage Plot: How Serial Form Works inMaupin’s Tales of the City’Brian Richardson, ‘Beyond Story and Discourse: Narrative Time in Postmodernand Nonmimetic Fiction’These theoretical texts are collected in Brian Richardson, ed., Narrative Dynamics:Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002).

Focus Questions

1. Richardson’s paper presents a largely historical account of changing practicesin the literary representation of time, and yet there are many ‘untimely’ prede-cessors and late incarnations of earlier practices. How might we account for thesetwo trajectories?

2. How can the types of temporal construction discussed in this essay be appliedto film? Is there anything lost or gained in cinematic temporality? Films to analyseinclude Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1927), Ingmar Bergman’sWild Strawberries (1957), Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1999), Christopher Nolan’sMemento (2001) and, for the daring, Alain Renais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s LastYear at Marienbad (1961).

3. How is chronology fashioned in a hypertext fiction?

4. Jorge Luis Borges has employed unusual temporalies in a number of his stories,such as ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’, ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, ‘The SecretMiracle’, ‘The Immortals’, and ‘The Aleph’ and an essay (which may also be afiction), ‘A New Refutation of Time’. Compare these stories with Borges-inspired works by J. G. Ballard such as ‘The Garden of Time’ and ‘Chronopolis’(both in The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard [New York: Holt, 1978]) and MartinAmis: ‘The Time Disease’ and ‘The Immortals’ in Einstein’s Monsters (London:Cape, 1987).

5. In his essay, Richardson mentions several ways authors experiment with nar-rative chronology, including adhering to ‘relatively pure linearity’, creating a senseof ‘quasi-linearity or a progression without chronology’, and experimenting withreverse or circular linearity. Is it ever possible to have a completely non-linearnarrative? Why or why not?

248 Literature Compass Teaching & Learning Guide

© 2008 The AuthorsJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

6. Read Julia Kristeva’s essay ‘Women’s Time’, which is mentioned in Richard-son’s article, and evaluate her argument. What is the relationship between one’sbody, social identity, and one’s experience of time? Within Kristeva’s text specif-ically, what is the relation, in terms of temporality, between her argument andthe double columned layout which her argument is presented in.

7. Discuss the roles of narrative beginnings and endings and how they reinforce(or possibly undermine) traditional notions of temporality. Some texts to considerin relation to this question are Woolf ’s The Waves, Rushdie’s Midnight’s Childrenand Roy’s The God of Small Things.

Seminar/Project Idea

Group Project: Twentieth Century Narrative and TemporalityThis project provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate an under-standing of some of the different ways twentieth century authors and theoristshave experimented with narrative and temporality by rewriting a well-knownshort story or folktale using one of the various models described by Richardsonin his article. Working in groups of three to four, students will collectively choosea story and then prepare their rewriting individually. As part of the project, eachstudent should include an author’s introduction explaining which original textwas chosen and why, which literary or theoretical model the student’s rewritingexplores, and how their experimentation with temporality and form changes thestory’s overall thematics. Students will then read the rewritings of other groupmembers and together write a group conclusion exploring differences and con-nections within their ‘collection’ of rewritings.

Works CitedMarinetti, F. T. ‘The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism’. F.T. Marinetti Critical Writings.

Ed. Günter Berghaus. Trans. Doug Thompson. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,2006. 11–17.