Transgressing Time

“Unpretentious and highly readable, Transgressing Time reaches beyond literary scholars to science fiction fans more broadly.” —Marie-Laure Ryan, author of A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If

“Transgressing Time offers both structural rigor and the playfulness inherent in the wide range of speculative literature it examines. Royston’s intersectional analyses don’t shy from critiquing the material. Where most analyses would stop at the unfortunate racial implications of time travel’s portrayal in narratives like Back to the Future, for example, Royston takes this further, showing how these instances are fundamental to how the narrative uses time travel structurally.” —Bogi Takács, Hugo Award–winning author, editor, and critic

The first systemic analysis of time travel as narrative device, Edward Royston’s Transgressing Time argues that as a fictional conceit, time travel can most fruitfully be understood from a narratological perspective that sidesteps questions of its plausibility. In service of this goal, Royston identifies the precise narrative device, “anachronic metalepsis,” that powers time travel. Existing at the confluence of narrative’s power to manipulate temporality and fiction’s power to transgress and displace across ontological boundaries, anachronic metalepsis demonstrates that the power of narrative itself is what enables time travel.

Royston bolsters this concept through readings of classics such as Back to the Future and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, contemporary works such as the video game Outer Wilds and Scott Alexander Howard’s The Other Valley, and lesser-known works such as the nineteenth-century Spanish novel El Anacronópete. These readings demonstrate how time travel functions across different mediums and genres and spotlights the ways authors and creators have used anachronic metalepsis to contend with themes of exile, freedom and consequences, the powers and pitfalls of nostalgia, the nature of history and our relationship to it, and the nature of time itself.

Edward Royston is Associate Professor of English at Pfeiffer University. His research lies at the intersection of narratology and science fiction studies. Transgressing Time is his first book.

Contents

Introduction         Toward a Rhetoric of Time Travel
Chapter 1         This Only Happens in Fiction
Chapter 2         The Anachronic Metalepsis
Chapter 3         Characteristics of the Anachronic Metalepsis
Chapter 4         Dilation and Relativity: The Anachronic Metalepsis and the Speed of Light
Chapter 5         Autochthony and Recursion: The Anachronic Metalepsis and Causal and Temporal Loops
Chapter 6         Celebrating and Interrogating Nostalgia: The Anachronic Metalepsis and Historical Revision
Chapter 7         Traveling to Other Times: The Anachronic Metalepsis and Alternate Histories
Chapter 8         Spatializing Time: The Anachronic Metalepsis and Space
Conclusion         Closing the Loop