Narrative, Temporality and the Modernist City Cover Image

Narrative, Temporality and the Modernist City
Narrative, Temporality and the Modernist City

Author(s): Ivana Dragoş
Subject(s): Aesthetics, Rural and urban sociology, Theory of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej
Keywords: the modernist city; London; palimpsest; subjective time; contemporary history;

Summary/Abstract: The article explores the idea of temporality in relation to high-modernist literary representations of London. I claim that the modernist metropolis appears as a palimpsest whose memorialising function is upheld by techniques such as fragmentation, citation, myth, allegory, intertextual references or allusions, which question the stereotypical relationship between then and now, subject and site. It does so by deconstructing traditional temporal sequences and by foregrounding a subtle connection between past and present. Thus, the modernist city will be considered as a space of transformation in which the substantialness of space and subjective time translates the elusive meaning of contemporary history.

  • Issue Year: 44/2020
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 123-131
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: English