The Unexpected: Narrative Temporality and the Philosophy of Surprise

ISBN-13: 9781474402354 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 192 str.

Mark Currie

Opis

Explores the relationship between unexpected events in narrative and life
Focusing on surprise, spontaneous eruption and the unforeseeable, The Unexpected argues that stories help us to reconcile what we expect with what we experience. Though narrative is often understood a recapitulation of past events, the book argues that the unexpected and the future anterior, a future that is already complete, are guiding ideas for new understandings of the reading process. It also points beyond that to some of the key temporal concepts of our epoch, of unpredictability, the event, the untimely and the messianic.
The Unexpected is an important intervention in narratology and a striking general argument about the cultural significance of surprise. The enquiry is developed by a range of new readings in philosophy and theory, as well as of Sarah Waters's Fingersmith, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending.
Key Features
An original discussion of the relation of time and narrative
An important intervention in narratology
A striking general argument about the workings of the mind
Provides an overview of the question of surprise in philosophy and literature

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Preface , What Lies Ahead; PART 1, Surprise and Narrative Theory; Chapter 1, A Flow of Unforeseeable Novelty; Chapter 2, Narratological Approaches to the Unforeseeable; PART 2; The Unpredictable and the Future Anterior; Chapter 3, Prediction and the Age of the Unknowable; Chapter 4, What Will Have Happened: Writing and the Future Perfect; Chapter 5, The Untimely and the Messianic; PART 3; Time Flow and the Reading Process; Chapter 6, Narrative Modality: Probability, Possibility and the Passage of Time; Chapter 7, Temporal Perspective: Narrative Futurity and the Distribution of Knowledge; PART 4; The Unforeseeable in Fictional Form; Chapter 8, Maximum Peripeteia: The Reversal of Fortune and the Rhetoric of Temporal Doubling; Chapter 9, Freedom and the Inescapable Future; Chapter 10, The Philosophy of Grammar; Bibliography.