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Journeys into the Wilderness of Time - Bologna University Press
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Recasting North America, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture moderne - LILEC
Journeys into the Wilderness of Time
Trauma and Temporality in Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo
di Chiara Patrizi
Journeys into the Wilderness of Time: Trauma and Temporality in Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo is a critical study of US contemporary fiction and its relationship with time. It argues that, in the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo, the mythical wilderness experience unfolds through time rather than space—and recognizes this same pattern in other contemporary texts. While acknowledging the role that space plays in the US mythical imagination (and in postmodern literature in particular), its purpose is to examine where and how the wilderness may be found when America, and the world, has become increasingly human-made. The close reading of a series of novels by Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse-Five, Timequake) and Don DeLillo (The Body Artist, Falling Man, Point Omega) illuminates on how the symbolism of the wilderness can be applied to time in contemporary fictions dealing with personal and communal trauma. Drawing from philosophical and literary studies on both the wilderness and the relationship between time and literature, it ultimately yields an innovative reframing of the myth of the wilderness. Here, the wilderness experience becomes a process to regain the present, in which vulnerability is not to be intended as an obstacle to overcome but as a source of creative awareness.

Chiara Patrizi teaches Anglo-American literature and is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Global Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Culture…
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Argomento
Critica letteraria, Lingue, Letterature e Culture moderne
Disciplina
Letteratura e linguistica
Formato
170 × 240 mm
Pagine
184
Anno
2026
Confezione
Brossura
Lingua
Inglese
ISBN
9791254779286
ISBN online
9791254779293
DOI
10.30682/9791254779293