135045 VO Literary cross-currents (VO): Time and memory in the modern novel (2023W)

The experience of external and internal time can be observed as a theme in 20th century novels all over the world; this is often followed by the problematisation of memory. Therefore, the lecture is entirely devoted to the comparative analysis of canonical narrative works in which temporality and memoria are central. This will be accompanied by an explanation of how narratology describes the handling of the phenomenon of time. The lecture is thus dedicated to one of the most prominent themes in the international novel, especially in the 20th century, and at the same time to one of the fundamental formal challenges to the novel. It will deal with time as a basic phenomenon of human life, insofar as modern narrative literature seeks to grasp it, with memory as a central mode of becoming aware of past time and with time as a structuring guiding category of large-scale narrative. Therefore, the lecture will focus on novels that give time a decisive thematic role and, as a result, have usually also found special solutions for the narrative shaping of time. The focus is on novels such as Marcel Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu", Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" and "Joseph and His Brothers", Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway", "To the Lighthouse" and "The Waves", William Faulkner's "The Sound and The Fury" and Heimito von Doderer's "Die Strudlhofstiege". In addition, avant-garde solutions to the problem of time in the novel are also discussed, such as in James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Michel Butor or, most recently, Szczepan Twardoch and John Wray. It is obvious that the lecture cannot replace the reading of the novels; however, the works are introduced thoroughly with reference to the theme of time. In addition, essential approaches to the philosophy of time that appear in the novels treated will be explained, as will the basic types of narrative treatment of time in the horizon of recent narratology. A bibliography and novel excerpts are provided as an accompaniment.