The invention of the present-tense novel is a literary event whose importance is on par with the discovery of perspective in painting. From the first novels shaped by interior monologues and the use of the present tense in the tradition of modernism, the present tense has, over the course of its century-long evolution, changed the conditions of fictional narration, along with our conceptions of time in a philosophical and linguistic framework. Indeed, to understand the work of an increasing number of contemporary writers – J.M. Coetzee, Tom McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, to name only a few – it is necessary to both understand the distinct linguistic and literary qualities of the present tense as well as its historical transformation into a genuine tense of contemporary storytelling.
For the first time in literary scholarship, Present Tense: A Poetics offers an account of a profound development in 20th- and 21st-century fiction.
- ISBN10 1628927658
- ISBN13 9781628927658
- Publish Date 5 November 2015 (first published 24 September 2015)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Imprint Bloomsbury Academic USA
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English