Present Tense Narration in Contemporary Fiction: A Narratological Overview

by Irmtraud Huber

Overview

In this book, Irmtraud Huber considers a wide range of contemporary novels to explore the variety of possibilities and effects of the use of the present tense, as well as investigating the reasons for its popularity. By illustrating the complexity and sophistication of four different types of contemporary usage, Huber’s discussion goes some way towards refuting those critical voices which consider present-tense narration a passing fad and stylistic affectation. As a tense of narration, the present can serve to tell different stories than the past tense, or can tell them differently. By no means a passing fad, it is an important characteristic of contemporary literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137562128
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	10/01/2016
Edition description:	2016
Pages:	123
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Irmtraud Huber is a lecturer in English literature at the Universität Bern, Switzerland. Her PhD on the role of fantastical elements in recent literary attempts to go beyond postmodernism received the Helene-Richter Prize from the Deutscher Anglistenverband. Her monograph Literature after Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies was published by Palgrave in 2014.

Table of Contents

Introduction.- Chapter 1. Past and Present of Present-tense Narration.- Chapter 2. Narrative Deictic Narration.- Chapter 3. Retrospective Narration.- Chapter 4. Interior Monologue.- Chapter 5. Simultaneous Narration.- Chapter 6. Mixed Cases.- Conclusion.- Appendix.- Works Cited.- Notes.

Editorial Reviews

Present-Tense Narration in Contemporary Fiction provides its reader with a comprehensive survey of different usages of the present tense in contemporary narrative fiction which accounts for the diversity of individual narratives by sensibly eschewing any form-to-function mapping. … Huber’s study makes for an inspiring read which gives valuable food for thought to any literary scholar interested not only in concrete manifestations of present-tense narration, but also in major works of contemporary fiction.” (Carolin Gebauer, Diegesis, Vol. 6 (1), 2017)

From the Publisher