Writing Out of Time: A Look at the Memoirs of Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov
Location
Wedgewood Conference Center, Room 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
22-9-2014 11:00 AM
Description
Time is a vexing issue for writers of memoir or any form of life writing. How is one to transform the swirl of lived time into a coherent text? Or how is one to select which time periods or moments in one’s life to represent in a text? Writers can resort to giving an account of events in chronological order, but chronology doesn’t account for the way human beings actually experience time. Since we move fluidly in time, simultaneously experiencing multiple past memories while anticipating future actions in any given instant, we know that the human experience of time far surpasses chronology. But matters of style and representation are only a fraction of the problem. How does one comprehend time at all—not only as writers who must try to represent it in their texts, but as human beings who must try to comprehend it in their lives. In this talk, Dr. Stover will examine how Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov develop a philosophy of time in the course of writing their memoirs, inviting us to ask: “What is time and what does it mean for a human consciousness that can both conceive of eternity and of its own death?” In the end, each writer challenges the limitations of chronology and oppressive linearity in accounting for time in their texts and in their lives.
Recommended Citation
Stover, Andrea, "Writing Out of Time: A Look at the Memoirs of Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov" (2014). Humanities Symposium. 37.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2014/2014/37
Writing Out of Time: A Look at the Memoirs of Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov
Wedgewood Conference Center, Room 4094
Time is a vexing issue for writers of memoir or any form of life writing. How is one to transform the swirl of lived time into a coherent text? Or how is one to select which time periods or moments in one’s life to represent in a text? Writers can resort to giving an account of events in chronological order, but chronology doesn’t account for the way human beings actually experience time. Since we move fluidly in time, simultaneously experiencing multiple past memories while anticipating future actions in any given instant, we know that the human experience of time far surpasses chronology. But matters of style and representation are only a fraction of the problem. How does one comprehend time at all—not only as writers who must try to represent it in their texts, but as human beings who must try to comprehend it in their lives. In this talk, Dr. Stover will examine how Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov develop a philosophy of time in the course of writing their memoirs, inviting us to ask: “What is time and what does it mean for a human consciousness that can both conceive of eternity and of its own death?” In the end, each writer challenges the limitations of chronology and oppressive linearity in accounting for time in their texts and in their lives.
Comments
Convocation Credit: Academic Lecture