Detaining Time

Detaining Time is the first book to investigate the representation of time in literature in terms of the project to reconceptualize time so that its movement no longer threatens security. Focusing on the nature consequences and resolution of resistance to temporal passage Eric P. Levy offers detailed and probing close readings enriched by thorough yet engaging explication and application of prominent philosophical theories of time. Philosophy is here employed not as a rigid model to which literature is forced to conform but instead as a lens through which elements crucial to the literary texts can be isolated and clarified even as they concern ideas different from those expounded in philosophy. The literary texts treated include Hamlet Hard Times Ulysses Mrs Dalloway To the Lighthouse a wide range of Beckettian works and Enduring Love textsdistinguished by their challenging relentless original and dramatic depiction of the struggle with temporality. The philosophies of time covered include those of Aristotle Kant Bergson John McTaggart C.D. Broad Edmund Husserl and Gilles Deleuze.