Shapes of Time
History and Eschatology in the Modernist Imagination
Michael McGillen
- 336 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Shapes of Time
History and Eschatology in the Modernist Imagination
Michael McGillen
About This Book
Shapes of Time explores how concepts of time and history were spatialized in early twentieth-century German thought. Michael McGillen locates efforts in German modernism to conceive of alternative shapes of timeâbeyond those of historicism and nineteenth-century philosophies of historyâat the boundary between secular and theological discourses. By analyzing canonical works of German modernismâthose of Karl Barth, Franz Rosenzweig, Siegfried Kracauer, and Robert Musilâhe identifies the ways in which spatial imagery and metaphors were employed to both separate the end of history from a narrative framework and to map the liminal relation between history and eschatology.
Drawing on theories and practices as disparate as constructivism, non-Euclidean geometry, photography, and urban architecture, Shapes of Time presents original connections between modernism, theology, and mathematics as played out within the canon of twentieth-century German letters. Concepts of temporal and spatial form, McGillen contends, contribute to the understanding not only of modernist literature but also of larger theoretical concerns within modern cultural and intellectual history.