The Unexpected: Narrative Temporality and the Philosophy of Surprise (Frontiers of Theory) by Mark Currie (19-Apr-2015) Paperback

by Mark Currie

This study considers the effect of stories on the way we think about time, particularly the future. Focusing on surprise and the unforeseeable, the volume treats stories as mechanisms reconciling what is taking place with what will have been. The relation between the present and the future perfect creates a grammatical formula challenging our default notions of narrative as recollection and recapitulation. It offers new understandings of the reading process within the strange logic of a future already complete, while also touching on the key temporal concepts of our prediction and unpredictability, uncertainty, the event, the untimely, and the messianic.

Genres: Criticism

Paperback

First published January 1, 2013