Metaficção e passagem à pós-modernidade em A seta do tempo, de Martin Amis

Abstract

This essay, although taking into consideration the metaliterary dimension of Martin Amis’ novel Time’s arrow, mainly analyzes the implications of subverting chronological time in a narrative so closely linked to a historical fact (the Second World War) and, as a consequence, to the turbulent period under its influence (the 20th century). In the first section, the essay focuses more directly on the metafictional aspect discussed in an afterword to the novel by the author himself, where Amis tries to clarify how the idea for the book originally came up. It is also possible to identify an omnipresent dilemma in the book which the second part of our text is deeply concerned about: “Who is the narrator?” – in other words, the central question, here, of identity, or identities. Which takes us to the heart of the matter, still developed in part two as well as in the third and last section: in the face of the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of this novel, it inevitably points out to the concept of post-modernity. In Amis’s book, a transitional concept caught, we shall see, at its very rite of passage.