Emplotment beyond the Human Scale: On Deep Time and Narrative Nonlinearity

Abstract In the second volume of Time and Narrative (1985, 101–12), Paul Ricoeur distinguishes between two layers temporality in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925): he calls them “monumental” time “mortal” time. The former is connected with authority British imperial politics; latter subjective, highly malleable human experience. But there another time, also active novel her oeuvre more generally, that seems to overlook. It “deep history” (Shryock Smail 2011) geological planetary phenomena vastly surpasses scale individual humans or societies, even species. This not say narrative at ease this deep temporality; as a practice, it fundamentally skewed toward ethical hermeneutic concerns foregrounds his work. does surface narrative; article concerned formal challenges raised by such surfacings.