Catching Up with Time: Belatedness and Anachronies in Francophone Literature and Culture

This volume offers an important examination of the ways in which artistic manipulations of time can lead to a different perception of time as nonsynchronous and anti-chronological. The range of media (philosophical essays, film, plays, novels, autobiographical narratives) and periods (medieval, early modern, contemporary) explored here testify to the enduring significance of so-called delays and the need to rethink these as anachronies. The spectral presence of the notion of Kairos throughout this volume connects different attempts to subvert linear time, on occasion allowing events and temporalities to coexist and compete or, alternately, asking the mind to stretch itself and experience the uneasiness of time by attempting and failing to encompass diverse spaces and temporalities concomitantly. The resulting essays interrogate, test and contest the limits of the possible and enable a rethinking of what time could represent across disciplines and genres.