Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Present Tense Novel 2. Readings in Methodology 3. The Imaginary Present Tense 4. Tense Philosophy Conclusion Glossary Notes
Describes how the present tense was invented and why the poetics of the present tense novel is essential for an understanding of contemporary literature and the evolution of the novel since modernism.
Armen Avanessian is Visiting Faculty in the MA Aesthetics and Politics program in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, USA, and, since 2014, Visiting Lecturer at the Art Institute, FHN Academy Basel, Switzerland. Previously he has been a Visiting Fellow in the German Department at Columbia University and in the German Department at Yale University. From 2007-2014 he taught at the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at Free University Berlin, Germany. He is editor in chief at Merve Verlag Berlin. In 2012 he founded a bilingual research platform on Speculative Poetics, including a series of events, translations and publications: www.spekulative-poetik.de. Anke Hennig is a theorist of literature and visual culture. Currently she is teaching at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London, UK, and organising the international research group 'Retro-Formalism' (www.retroformalism.net). Previously she taught at the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at Free University Berlin, Germany, and has been a Fulbright Fellow at New York University, USA.
This book renews attention to poetics as a worthy field of literary
studies by offering a thorough and systematic examination of the
narrative and philosophical significance of tense. The manner of
delivery is engaging even as it remains scholarly. Fresh, at times
daring, in its propositions, this work will no doubt provoke
interest and generate discussion.
*Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature,
Queen Mary, University of London, UK*
Combining linguistics, literary theory and philosophy of time — in
particular utilising Gilles Deleuze’s three paradoxes of the past
and Gustave Guillaume’s language theory — the authors deliver a
sound technical analysis of the development of the novel. Claiming
that ‘only language has the power to define the boundaries of the
present,’ they produce an innovative and integrated
fiction-narratological approach that can be used to identify the
characteristics of the altermodern novel. … Spanning a range of
avant-garde writers, philosophers and linguists from Britain, the
US, Russia, France, Italy and Germany, this study presents a
fascinating insight on temporality and tense-patterns in narrative,
demonstrating how the past can be as unpredictable as the
future.
*The Morning Star*
Avanessian and Hennig explore the use of the present tense in
novels of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Specifically,
they borrow the art-theoretical term ‘altermodern,’ first used by
art scholar Nicolas Bourriaud, to categorize contemporary novels
that employ a new understanding of the present tense, one that
marks a break with previously published present-tense novels that
employ classical narration. Avanessian and Hennig further argue
that the altermodern novel reflects a new understanding of the
novel's relationship to time and changes the reader's understanding
of the relationship between narration and time. ... [T]he book
includes some smart, well-articulated readings of novels. In fact,
one of the strengths of this book is the use of exemplary passages
from novels written in English, French, German, and Russian; this
study does a great job of broadly surveying novels from many
traditions. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students,
researchers, faculty.
*CHOICE*
How do we account for the widespread use of the present tense in
contemporary narratives? What has happened to our understanding of
time if a fundamental tenet of fictionality—the idea that
narratives make present something that happened in the (real or
imagined) past—seems no longer operative? Drawing on narratology,
cognitive science, deconstruction and philosophy of language,
Avanessian and Hennig reconceptualize the relation between time and
narrative; what is more, they rethink poetics as an expanded
cultural theory concerned with human world-making. An impressive
tour de force.
*Andreas Gailus, Associate Professor of German, University of
Michigan, USA*
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