Some Notes Towards a Rhetoric of Time Travel A
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SOME NOTES TOWARDS A RHETORIC OF TIME TRAVEL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE TEXAS WOMAN'S UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, SPEECH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES BY EDWARD J. ROYSTON, B.A., M.A. DENTON, TEXAS MAY 2018 Copyright © Edward J. Royston DEDICATION For all the time travelers hiding in the wings. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The following individuals deserve my undying thanks. I would like to thank my committee chair Dr. Gretchen Busl for introducing me to Narratology and guiding me through this process. I would also like to thank Drs. Brian Fehler and Graham Scott for their invaluable feedback and guidance. I am grateful to the faculty at Texas Woman's University for challenging me and helping me grow as a scholar. Additionally, I am grateful to all the staff in the English, Speech, and Foreign Language department and Graduate School. This document would not exist but for their assistance. Many further thanks go to my classmates and colleagues, especially Dr. Maureen Johnson who has been an invaluable friend and support through this process. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for being immensely patient and generally awesome. iii ABSTRACT EDWARD J. ROYSTON SOME NOTES TOWARDS A RHETORIC OF TIME TRAVEL MAY 2018 This project aims to examine time travel not as a scientific possibility, but as a narrative device employed towards various rhetorical aims. Drawing on Narratology, this project first establishes a terminology to discuss how time travel functions as a narrative device related to anachronies and metalepses. Having coined the term anachronic metalepsis to explain the narrative functions of time travel, this project then turns to close readings of eight time travel narratives drawn from different genres and mediums. Organized into clusters focusing on the causal and spatial potentials of time travel, these readings demonstrate time travel narratives' powers to manifest and dramatize narrative and historical forces, explore questions of causality and choice, and spatialize history and examine our relationship with it. Ultimately, this project demonstrates that time travel is a many-faceted narrative device that exists across multiple genres and serves many different purposes, thus calling for further examination of time travel narratives as artifacts created to shoulder specific rhetorical burdens. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION .................................................................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................ iii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................... iv Chapter I.THIS STUFF ONLY HAPPENS IN STORIES .............................................. 1 II.A RHETORICAL POETICS OF TIME TRAVEL ....................................... 22 Narrative Time ........................................................................................... 24 Narrative Time and Space ......................................................................... 39 Narrative Levels ......................................................................................... 52 III.THE END IS THE BEGINNING ............................................................. 75 The Entelechy of Love in The Time Traveler's Wife .................................. 82 The Possibilities of Choice in Life after Life ............................................... 93 Breaking the Causal Cycle in Looper ...................................................... 103 Closing Remarks ..................................................................................... 115 IV.AT A DISTANT TIME, IN A DISTANT LOCATION .............................. 119 Hypnotic Nostalgia in Time and Again ..................................................... 127 v The Painful Past in Kindred ..................................................................... 135 The Map is the Territory in The Girl From Everywhere ........................... 148 Closing Remarks ..................................................................................... 155 V.THE SPACE BETWEEN TIMES ........................................................... 158 Meet New Worlds, Same as the Old World in Nomad of Time ................ 165 Along the Border of Two Tomorrows in The Peripheral .......................... 176 Closing Remarks ..................................................................................... 188 VI.BACK TO THE BEGINNING AGAIN ................................................... 190 WORKS CITED............................................................................................200 vi CHAPTER I THIS STUFF ONLY HAPPENS IN STORIES Time travel is only possible in narrative. Time travel may be possible according to certain logical, philosophical, and scientific views of the real world, but in a practical sense, it is not possible outside of narrative. If it were, where are all the time travelers? Why is Trump still president?1 There are logical, philosophical, and scientific answers to these questions, but they do not prove time travel's existence; they only respond to some questions raised by the possibility of its existence. The time dilation caused by traveling at a meaningful fraction of the speed of light can lead to a sort of time travel, where the traveler experiences a shorter period of time relative to those at her departure point and destination, but this only works in one direction, going "forward" into the future, and it is not a practical means of time travel available to inhabitants of the real world. James Gleick notes a case of time dilation in the real world: When the American astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth in March 2016 after nearly a year of high-speed orbit, he was reckoned to be 8.6 milliseconds younger, relative to his groundling twin brother, Mark. (Then 1 The Futurama episode "Decision 3012" provides an answer for this sort of question. In it, a man is sent back from the apocalyptic future resulting from Nixon's reelection (it would require another footnote to explain that, so just roll with it). His mission is to defeat Nixon and avert the future from which he comes. He is successful, and since the future from which he comes no longer happens, he ceases to exist, and Nixon wins unopposed. 1 again, Mark had lived through only 340 days while Scott experienced 10,944 sunrises and sunsets.) (58). Gleick, in his parenthetical, notes that we can measure the temporal disjunction between Scott and Mark Kelly's lives in different ways, drawing attention to the fact that we can measure and perceive time in different ways. But more significant to my point is the insignificance of 8.6 milliseconds. An eye blink lasts between 100 and 400 milliseconds. Certainly, Mark and Scott Kelly were born more than 8.6 milliseconds apart; at least I hope so for their mother's sake. Traveling at high velocity for 340 days to arrive 8.6 milliseconds in the future is hardly time travel in any practical sense. And when you factor in the way that we experience time in ebbs and flows, where days sometimes seem to fly past while minutes sometimes feel like eternities, 8.6 milliseconds is so insignificant as to be meaningless. There is only one place where humans regularly experience time travel, and that is within the realm of narrative. Time travel then is foremost a narrative device, and thus it should be examined as one. Therefore, this dissertation asks: Toward what ends, narratological and rhetorical, do authors employ time travel? Narrative itself can be seen as a time machine. David Wittenberg states that "even the most elementary narratives, whether fictional or non-fictional, set out to modify or manipulate the order, duration, and significance of events in time" (1). Narrators possess a power to manipulate time. A narrator may move 2 forward and backward in his or her story's timeline, revealing details of the past in flashbacks and visions of the future for his or her characters through foreshadowing. A narrator may skip over periods of time in which no pertinent action occurs and speed up or slow down their presentations of events. Consider for example what may be the most basic and natural form of narrative: the extemporaneous personal anecdote. We have all witnessed a storyteller jump about in the chronology of her tale as she remembers significant details and monitors and reacts to the questions and responses of her audience. Other more formal examples can be found in nearly all eras of Western culture. The Odyssey begins in the middle of its story, in medias res. The medieval rhetorician and poetic stylist, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, in his Poetria Nova encouraged the use of what he calls (ironically in this case) "unnatural" beginnings, ones that start at a middle or end point in the story's action so as to highlight the significance of that part of the action to the story's rhetorical burden. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter begins in a time separated from its main action by centuries. The available examples explode with the advent of modern and post-modern fiction and the development of film narratives. Proust's In Search of Lost Time jumps forwards and backwards throughout its narrator Marcel's life, often in confusing ways. A similar sense of temporal confusion can be found in the "Benjy" section of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. Films like those in the Rocky