Abstract

This paper deals with the chronotope of the postmodern novel, such as Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor, in which non-linear time and temporal displacement problematise the reality by questioning scientific laws that govern the time perspective of the modern world, and by questioning social and cultural constructions of time in Western society. The author problematises the linear time perspective in two ways: by reversing the supposed direction of time, i.e. traveling backwards in time, and by using two historically discontinuous time frames. This paper will show how the novel successfully challenges modern assumptions about linear time and history, because at the ending the readers have to accept that the lines between past and present are becoming blurred and that the two main characters may have been one identity, partly in the present and partly in the past