Traces and Polytemporality in A. S. Byatt’s Short Stories
In Memory, History, Forgetting, Paul Ricœur outlines a typology of the trace that distinguishes three main categories: “cortical” or “mnesic” traces, “psychical” or “affective” traces, and “documentary” traces. The concept of the trace has been recently revisited by Victoria Browne in Feminism, Time...
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| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse, |
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| Autor Principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Journal of the Short Story in English
2022
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| Acceso en liña: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | In Memory, History, Forgetting, Paul Ricœur outlines a typology of the trace that distinguishes three main categories: “cortical” or “mnesic” traces, “psychical” or “affective” traces, and “documentary” traces. The concept of the trace has been recently revisited by Victoria Browne in Feminism, Time, and Nonlinear History. Browne introduces the notion of polytemporality, which relies on a dynamic perception of historical time as multidirectional, resulting from the interweaving of different temporal strands: “the time of the trace,” “narrative time,” “calendar time,” and “generational time.” Ricœur’s categorisation of the trace and its reformulation in Browne’s model of polytemporality offer an apt critical tool to explore Byatt’s lifelong engagement with the past, history, and memory. The article contends that the short story has provided Byatt with a fertile ground to explore the possibilities of the trace in the articulation of history and memory from a polytemporal point of view. |
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