Description
Book SynopsisA new view of the way modernist fiction writers tried to solve the problem of time.
Do our fictions transform time? Do they cultivate the temporal environment? Such was the hopeor the fantasyat work in many modernist novels for which time was not only the major subject but also an object of reparative aspiration. Aimed at a kind of stewardship of time, these fictions constitute a practice of modernist time ecology: an effort to restore those landscapes of time that have been thrown into crisis by modernity.
In Modernist Time Ecology, Jesse Matz redefines temporal experimentation in central writers like Proust, Mann, Woolf, Ellison, and Cather, who developed literary forms to cultivate, restore, and enrich the temporal environment. He brings fresh attention to others who best exemplify this ecological motive, arguing that E. M. Forster, J. B. Priestley, and V. S. Naipaul are leading figures in this practice of temporal redress. Matz also reveals how contemp
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. The Art of Time, Theory to Practice
Chapter Two. Modernist Time Ecology
Chapter Three. Bergson, Bakhtin, and the Ecological Chronotope
Chapter Four. Timescapes of Modernist Fiction
Chapter Five. Maurice in Time
Chapter Six. J. B. Priestley in the Theater of Time
Chapter Seven. Naipaul's Changing Times
Chapter Eight. Time Ecology Today
Chapter Nine. Film-Time Ecology
Chapter Ten. The Queer Prospect
Conclusion
Notes
Index
