Open AccessNarrative, Temporality and the Modernist City
Author(s) -
Dragoș Ivana
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
lubelskie materiały neofilologiczne/lublin studies in modern languages and literature
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2450-4580
pISSN - 0137-4699
DOI - 10.17951/lsmll.2020.44.2.123-131
Subject(s) - temporality , allegory , foregrounding , narrative , palimpsest , metaphor , mythology , literature , art , metonymy , relation (database) , subject (documents) , meaning (existential) , space (punctuation) , aesthetics , philosophy , epistemology , linguistics , database , library science , computer science
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.