This thesis is an exploration of the concept of time and its influence on literature. It is presented through an original novel, ‘The three arrows’, a critical reflection on this work, and an essay exploring the catalyst of change generated by the perception of time. The novel is inspired by Stephen Hawking’s ‘A brief history of time’ and his ‘arrows of time’: the thermodynamic arrow, in which entropy increases; the psychological arrow, the direction in which we feel time pass; and the cosmological arrow, the direction of time in which the universe expands. The literary techniques adopted in the writing of the novel are discussed, as is the author’s research into the construction of time in literary discourse and its relationship to religious, philosophical, historical and psychological constructions. The catalytic force of scientific thought and discovery as it resonates through these fields is traced. Modernist and Postmodernist writing is examined, the Modernists with their technique of time-displacement and the Postmodernists with their exploration of randomness and discontinuity in the belief that it is the profound and discernable effect of the entropy and escalating change in a world of scientific uncertainty on the writing process itself. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

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"Kinds of Spaces: Poststructural Concepts and Metafictional Appropriations" emerges from studies in structural linguistics, contemporary critical theory, and metafiction and thus moves into the realms of poststructuralism and deconstruction while developing a theory of space in writing. Its central sections attempt to conceptually and physically broaden the scope of the investigation and progress from linguistic space, via inscribed space and ontological inter-space, to erotic space. Thus, "Marking a Place of Differ( )nce" concerns the poststructural redefinition of the Saussurean model with its gap between signifier and signified in the debate between Lacan and Derrida on the "Purloined Letter"; "'a spatial displacement of words"' discusses the disruption of syntax and the ensuing dissemination of letters across the page in concrete prose, particularly as they relate to narratological displacement in Raymond Federman's Double or Nothing; "From Ear to Eye" reenacts the analogy created between sound and sight in Steve Katz's The Exagggerations of Peter Prince, which attempts an erosion of ontological and spatial boundaries in the text; "The Body, the Book, and the Supplement of Supplements" addresses the physical space between reader and book, the uniting of their bodies, and is based on Rousseau's concept of the supplement, Foucault's notion of the gaze, and Baudrillard's discussion of seduction.These central sections are framed by: "The Blank in Writing," which develops a theory of blank space in writing mostly drawing on Derridean concepts and applying them to a reading of the Mobv Dick chapter "The Whiteness of the Whale," and "The Topography of Writing," which, while focussing on the relationship between space and time, discusses Raymond Federman's The Voice in the Closet, a typographical tour de force which incorporates blank space. At the end, a "Postscript" attempts to assess the blank's sign quality as it emerges as integral constituent to each concept discussed. / Department of English

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1984. / Bibliography: leaves 182-190. / Photocopy. / Microfilm. / xii, 190 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-190).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1961. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 437-462).