Chronotopes of the Uncanny. Time and Space in Postmodern New York Novels. Paul Auster´s City of Glass and Toni Morrison´s Jazz
Petra Eckhard
Bielefeld: transcript, 2011
English, 206 pages, paperback
ISBN 978-3-8376-1841-9
EUR 29.80

Using the theoretical frameworks of Freud, Todorov, and Bahktin, this book explores how American writers of the late twentieth century have translated the psychoanalytical concept of "the uncanny" into their novelistic discourses. The two texts under scrutiny - Paul Auster´s City of Glass and Toni Morrison´s Jazz - show that the uncanny has developed into a crucial trope to delineate personal and collective fears that are often grounded on the postmodern disruption of spatio-temporal continuities and coherences.

Petra Eckhard is an academic assistant in the Institute of Architectural Theory, Art History and Cultural Studies.