Väitös (yleinen kirjallisuustiede): FM Iisa af Ursin
Aika
30.5.2025 klo 12.00 - 16.00
FM Iisa af Ursin esittää väitöskirjansa ”From Clock Time to Poetic Time: Conceptions of Time in Julio Cortázar's Short Stories” julkisesti tarkastettavaksi Turun yliopistossa perjantaina 30.5.2025 klo 12.00 (Turun yliopisto, päärakennus, Tauno Nurmela -sali, Turku).
Vastaväittäjänä toimii apulaisprofessori Lucy Bell (Rooman Sapienza-yliopisto, Italia) ja kustoksena professori Hanna Meretoja (Turun yliopisto). Tilaisuus on englanninkielinen. Väitöksen alana on yleinen kirjallisuustiede.
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Tiivistelmä väitöstutkimuksesta:
This study contributes to the study of time in comparative literature through producing a complex understanding of temporality in Argentine author Julio Cortázar’s (1914–1984) short stories and defining his conception of “another” time as poetic time.
Cortázar is one of the most celebrated novelists in modern Latin America. He was influenced by surrealism. Time has been recognized by scholars as a recurrent and central theme in Cortázar’s stories, but his view on “another” time, which he regards as a more genuine form of human time experience, has not been precisely defined before.
Cortázar criticizes modern temporality, where we follow routines, plan and organize our lives according to the clock. In his short stories, Cortázar shows the possibility to step outside of clock time into a time that is rooted in the visual characteristics of dream and poetry. In poetic time, boundaries between subject and object dissolve and the moment feels much longer than the time measured by clocks.
In my study I examine and compare the experiences of time in Cortázar’s ten short stories from the 1950s to the 1980s and show how poetic time can be reached through imagination, art, music and love. It offers an experience of living that is more intense, more authentic, and full of significance.
The context of the study is literary and cultural-historical. The cultural countertradition created by Romanticism and continuing in surrealism affected Cortázar’s ecstatic views on poetry. I show how, after the Cuban Revolution, the implications of poetic time change from an individual search to a communal effort and how later the associated tones darken with the political changes in Latin America, particularly the right-wing dictatorship that arose in Argentina.
The thesis offers the concept of poetic time for further studies on time in literature. It also questions our perception of time, which we consider so natural: could we experience the world in a richer and more meaningful way?
Vastaväittäjänä toimii apulaisprofessori Lucy Bell (Rooman Sapienza-yliopisto, Italia) ja kustoksena professori Hanna Meretoja (Turun yliopisto). Tilaisuus on englanninkielinen. Väitöksen alana on yleinen kirjallisuustiede.
***
Tiivistelmä väitöstutkimuksesta:
This study contributes to the study of time in comparative literature through producing a complex understanding of temporality in Argentine author Julio Cortázar’s (1914–1984) short stories and defining his conception of “another” time as poetic time.
Cortázar is one of the most celebrated novelists in modern Latin America. He was influenced by surrealism. Time has been recognized by scholars as a recurrent and central theme in Cortázar’s stories, but his view on “another” time, which he regards as a more genuine form of human time experience, has not been precisely defined before.
Cortázar criticizes modern temporality, where we follow routines, plan and organize our lives according to the clock. In his short stories, Cortázar shows the possibility to step outside of clock time into a time that is rooted in the visual characteristics of dream and poetry. In poetic time, boundaries between subject and object dissolve and the moment feels much longer than the time measured by clocks.
In my study I examine and compare the experiences of time in Cortázar’s ten short stories from the 1950s to the 1980s and show how poetic time can be reached through imagination, art, music and love. It offers an experience of living that is more intense, more authentic, and full of significance.
The context of the study is literary and cultural-historical. The cultural countertradition created by Romanticism and continuing in surrealism affected Cortázar’s ecstatic views on poetry. I show how, after the Cuban Revolution, the implications of poetic time change from an individual search to a communal effort and how later the associated tones darken with the political changes in Latin America, particularly the right-wing dictatorship that arose in Argentina.
The thesis offers the concept of poetic time for further studies on time in literature. It also questions our perception of time, which we consider so natural: could we experience the world in a richer and more meaningful way?
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