Blended Text World in ‘Signal Moon’ by Kate Quinn

Time travel is one of the recurrent themes in literary works. It offers its character(s) the chance to be located in a different era backwards or forwards. Signal Moon is a 2022 short story that tackles time travel from an innovative perspective where the two main characters are not relocated in different eras, but they are given the chance to orally interact each in his own time and space zone. Language, among other literary tools, is a key element writers employ to draw inconsistencies of interaction across time; Signal Moon enhances the role of this key tool, being the only method of interaction between the hero and the heroine. Applying Text World Theory with a new perspective integrating the central concept of the blending theory shows how the author creates different text worlds, marking the separate time frames of past and future on the one hand and a blended world with a blended time frame of both past and future on the other. The main characters interact in live real time conversations while being eighty years apart. The uniqueness of the work is highlighted through this blended world, reflecting a distinguished interaction of historical and social facts across time and space, stressing the strength of natural strong human ties and anonymous heroism in times of conflict. Analysis is to focus on how different text worlds including a blended world are constructed, how shifts between worlds are realized, and how these shifts reflect and support the themes of the short story.