Edwards, Caroline (2012) Rethinking the Arcadian revenge: metachronous times in the fiction of Sam Taylor. Modern Fiction Studies 58 (3), pp. 477-502. ISSN 0026-7724.
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Abstract
This article interrogates representations of time in the novels of Sam Taylor. Drawing on Ernst Bloch’s utopian philosophical framework, I argue that Taylor’s non-contemporaneous or “metachronous” temporalities reconfigure narrative time within the broader context of increasingly post-secular questions of final judgment. Rather than recapitulating the “Arcadian revenge” of SF ecocatastrophes, Taylor’s nonanthropocentric glimpses of futurity enable us to move beyond the dichotomy of pastoral Arcadia/savage wilderness in twenty-first-century fiction. A comparative reading of Bloch’s writings on natural futurity and Taylor’s novels thus helps us reorient the theorization of temporality, suggesting new directions for post-apocalyptic, ecocritical, and utopian literary analysis.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | contemporary British fiction, 21st century literature, Sam Taylor, pastoral, post-apocalypse, apocalyptic fiction, science fiction, literary theory, critical theory, Ernst Bloch |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Contemporary Literature, Centre for |
| Depositing User: | Caroline Edwards |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jan 2014 11:10 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Apr 2025 11:45 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/8876 |
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