Date of Award

2002

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Creative Writing

First Advisor

Michael Castro

Second Advisor

Charlene Engleking

Third Advisor

Harry Jackson

Abstract

The purpose of this culminating project is to compile information about the evolution and development of the idea of time travel in western literature.

This endeavor offers a historical approach tracing the evolution of the idea of time travel in literature, its consideration in science, and the interaction between these two fields to create a new theme of art.

Through the analysis of different works about time travel, we will identify plot, themes, symbols and other elements that are common to this sort of literature. From these elements we will be in the position to infer the meaning that each writer desires to convey to us, and demonstrate what makes time travel literature a unique expression of contemporary art, one in which the boundaries between fantasy and reality become blurred by the achievements of the human mind.

Time travel can be viewed in literature as a search for redemption in the most obvious way that our human mind can envision: tum back time and have a second chance. The time traveler goes to a place in the past to change some event in the future or goes to the future to avoid some consequence of present conduct.

Time travel has given rise to a hero in literature whose scenario is a time that he does not correspond to: the time traveler. The reasons for the appearance of this figure at a certain point in human history due to surrounding cultural and intellectual trends is an issue widely discussed in critical literature and elaborated in this document. It is difficult to develop and prove a hypothesis about the origin of the idea based only in literature, since there is no possible way to find out who was the first person who dreamed or thought about traveling through time; but according to all the sources consulted and the literature reviewed, time travel literature can be explained as a logical consequence of the state of western civilization beginning at the end of the nineteenth century and extending to the present day.

The project also seeks to establish the importance of the unrestrained thinking that fantasy and science fiction offer to the fields of science, by projecting scenarios that conventional logic cannot offer.

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