Fictional representations of time in narrative

• Main Author: Ho, Jia Xuan
• Other Authors: Daniel Keith Jernigan
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::Literature
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/151184
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This dissertation seeks to address what constitutes the experience of time by examining the works of three writers who are fundamentally concerned with the relationship between time, experience and reality: J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, Dermot Healy’s A Goat’s Song and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending. By placing the thematic concepts and perceptions of time as one of the primary concerns in their novels, these writers experiment with the ways that time is presented from two major angles: the realm of the narrative and the fictional reality of the characters in terms of their experience and perceptions. The word “fictionality” in the title of this project serves two purposes: Firstly, it reminds us that the very nature of time and its measurement is a human construct. Secondly, it observes how the way one perceives time—and reality—in the novel is very much dependent on the various rhetorical devices employed in its conception. Through the examination and comparative analysis of the narrative techniques in each of their novels, this dissertation will argue that the narrative experiments of these writers offer new and innovative ways of contemplating the experience of time, including the abstract question of whether time can serve as a measurement of an individual’s lived experience and reality.