Madmen In and Out of Time : A McTaggartian Reading of Madness in Fiction

Bánházi, Judit (2019) Madmen In and Out of Time : A McTaggartian Reading of Madness in Fiction. Pro&Contra, 3 (1). pp. 5-30. ISSN 2630-8916

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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to familiarize readers with a philosophical essay by J.M.E. McTaggart and then to employ it as a basis of literary analysis. The early-20th century arguments on the unreality of time by metaphysician J.M.E. McTaggart’s are applied to the temporal experience of madmen in 19th-20th century British and American prose pieces. It is the intention of this study to decipher the thoughts of certain characters in works by Bernard Malamud, Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe, in the hope that we can uncover logic, truth-value, or a channel of communication with them. The purpose is not to prove that they did not suffer from psychological illnesses, rather it is to challenge the idea that the inability to exist in linear, everyday time is a symptom of madness. By familiarizing the reader with McTaggart’s assertion that time is unreal, and approximating it to the quantum-physical theories of Stephen Hawking, I attempt to outline how McTaggart’s ideas concerning time align with those prevalent today. By analyzing how the characters in certain prose pieces think about time or live in time, I contend that their experiences offer an opportunity for us to learn and understand.

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