Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative - Softcover

Wittenberg, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0823249972 ISBN 13: 9780823249978

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2013

Synopsis

This book argues that time travel fiction is a narrative "laboratory," a setting for thought experiments in which essential theoretical questions about storytelling--and by extension, about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity--are represented in the form of literal devices and plots.

Drawing on physics, philosophy, narrative theory, psychoanalysis, and film theory, the book links innovations in time travel fiction to specific shifts in the popularization of science, from evolutionary biology in the late 1800s, through relativity and quantum physics in the mid-twentieth century, to more recent multiverse cosmologies. Wittenberg shows how increasing awareness of new scientific models leads to surprising innovations in the literary "time machine," which evolves from a "vehicle" used chiefly for sociopolitical commentary into a psychological and narratological device capable of exploring with great sophistication the temporal structure and significance of subjects, viewpoints, and historical events.

The book covers work by well-known time travel writers such as H. G. Wells, Edward Bellamy, Robert Heinlein, Samuel Delany, and Harlan Ellison, as well as pulp fiction writers of the 1920s through the 1940s, popular and avant-garde postwar science fiction, television shows such as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and current cinema. Literature, film and TV are read alongside theoretical work ranging from Einstein, Schrödinger, and Hawking to Gérard Genette, David Lewis, and Gilles Deleuze. Wittenberg argues that even the most mainstream audiences of popular time travel fiction and cinema are vigorously engaged with many of the same questions about temporality, identity, and history that concern literary theorists, media and film scholars, and philosophers.

About this title

About the Author:

David Wittenberg is Associate Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Philosophy, Revision, Critique: Rereading Practices in Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Emerson.

Review:

"David Wittenberg['s] remarkable hypothesis [about the origin of SF time travel] is only one of the conceptual breakthroughs in this stimulating contribution to literary theory." -Fredric Jameson, The London Review of Books "In this provocative book, Wittenberg moves deftly among the fields of narratology, evolutionary science, psychoanalysis, and physics (in particular quantum theory and relativity theory) as he mounts the argument that 'time travel fiction . . . [may] be regarded as a philosophical literature par excellence.'" -KronoScope "This is an important book, a major study of the time-travel genre which synthesises a dazzling range of references from the history of sf, cultural studies, film theory, narratology and the philosophy, physics and psychology of time." -Science Fiction Film and Television "A fruitful cross-pollination of theory and popular fiction, this is at once a careful genre study and a wide-ranging disquisition on narratology." -Rob Latham, University of California, Riverside "An ambitious, synthetic book. Wittenberg's brilliance lies in the comprehensive clarity with which he maps different discursive territories, and grasps how he can use time travel fiction to invent and practice, simultaneously, 'a popular philosophy of narrative.'"-Paul A. Harris, Loyola Marymount University "This is one of the rare academic books that are worth reading all the way through." -Pro Rege "David Wittenberg's remarkable book seeks to account for our enduring fascination with the paradoxes of time-travel stories." -Science Fiction Studies "Time Travel is extremely well research and has a lively style, which is a pleasure to read. Academically, this book is a vital source for anyone researching or studying time-travel literature; for those with a general interest in the theme will enjoy learning about how time travel literature has evolved and how, most importantly, it has engaged us as readers." -Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0823249972
• ISBN 13: 9780823249978
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320