Present Tense: A Poetics

Present Tense: A Poetics
ISBN-10
1628927674
ISBN-13
9781628927672
Series
Present Tense
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
272
Language
English
Published
2015-09-24
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Authors
Armen Avanessian, Anke Hennig

Description

The invention of the present-tense novel is a literary event whose importance is on par with the discovery of perspective in painting. From the first novels shaped by interior monologues and the use of the present tense in the tradition of modernism, the present tense has, over the course of its century-long evolution, changed the conditions of fictional narration, along with our conceptions of time in a philosophical and linguistic framework. Indeed, to understand the work of an increasing number of contemporary writers – J.M. Coetzee, Tom McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, to name only a few – it is necessary to both understand the distinct linguistic and literary qualities of the present tense as well as its historical transformation into a genuine tense of contemporary storytelling. For the first time in literary scholarship, Present Tense: A Poetics offers an account of a profound development in 20th- and 21st-century fiction.

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