Heterogeneity of Temporality and the Narrative: A Retrospective Glance from Postmodernism to Greek Classics

The postmodern narratives manifest divergent forms of literary representation of time, notably as circular, contradictory, multi-linear; depicting also the chronological crisscrossing and temporal leaps of events. Noticeable in the works of late modernism also, such facets of temporality suggest a discernible continuity from late modernism to postmodernism. The dramas of Shakespeare too offer instances of his encounter with time as a complex entity, and his play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” portrays the plural relation of a single frame of time to human beings. This paper is based on the curiosity concerning the absorbing question if the above characteristics of time as multilinear, plural, chronologically multiple can be traced back to Greek antiquity and thus postmodern narrative’s relation with ancient Greek narrative can be hypothesized. Interestingly, invoking the reign of justice in nature, Anaximander had underscored the passage of contradictory phenomena into each other as the cornerstone of temporality commanding human destiny. Euripides’ Medea and Homer’s the Iliad illustriously testify to express time in its reverse flow, and in its plural, enigmatic elasticity. Greek classical literature, to a reliable extent, proves an allegiance to the imagination of time in its heterogenous dimension, which resists being categorized into the conception of a harmonious time. Such an instance allows for affirming a tangible convergence across history, enacting an affinity of late modern, postmodern period with the classical Greek antiquity concerning the literary portrayals of time in its heterogeneity.