Cirrus@Austlit

This thesis is an exploration of the concept of time and its influence on literature. It is presented through an original novel, 'The three arrows', a critical reflection on this work, and an essay exploring the catalyst of change generated by the perception of time. The novel is inspired by Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and his 'arrows of time': the thermodynamic arrow, in which entropy increases; the psychological arrow, the direction in which we feel time pass; and the cosmological arrow, the direction of time in which the universe expands.

'The literary techniques adopted in the writing of the novel are discussed, as is the author's research into the construction of time in literary discourse and its relationship to religious, philosophical, historical and psychological constructions. The catalytic force of scientific thought and discovery as it resonates through these fields is traced. Modernist and Postmodernist writing is examined, the Modernists with their technique of time-displacement and the Postmodernists with their exploration of randomness and discontinuity in the belief that it is the profound and discernable effect of the entropy and escalating change in a world of scientific uncertainty on the writing process itself.