The Face of the Future
An Affective Mental Time Traveler in Saul Bellow’s “A Father-to-Be”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21400046 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yanfang Tong (0000-0002-8588-5914, Zhejiang International Studies University), Ting Shen (0009-0000-1132-1959, Missouri University of Science and Technology) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 190-209 |
| Publication date | 2024-05-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Style (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0039-4238 • E-ISSN: 2374-6629 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/style.58.2.0190 |
| OpenAlex | W4402192067 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
This article focuses on a future-oriented Janus face portrayed in Saul Bellow’s short story “A Father-to-Be,” arguing that it builds an exceptional prospective fictional mind in Bellow’s writing with a great emphasis on emotion. Drawing on the “Janus hypothesis,” the article examines how the protagonist’s emotional and imaginative mind interprets the past and processes the present based on a gloomy anticipation of the future, while some previous literary studies on the memory-imagination cognition emphasize the imaginativeness of memory. Affective narratology is largely involved as the supportive explanatory framework in the analysis of the narrative style. The authors approach the structure of the entire story by regarding it as an emotion story and attempt to reveal the aesthetic value of its core narrative by taking emotion both as the force of character forming and as rhetoric
Face (sociological concept) · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Time travel · American Jewish Fiction Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |