Form, Time and Trauma
The Terence Davies Triptych and Queer Temporalities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21785082 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Smith (0000-0002-3430-2176, Edge Hill University), Matthew J Smith (0000-0002-2554-6099, Edge Hill University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 118-137 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of British Cinema and Television (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1743-4521 • E-ISSN: 1755-1714 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/jbctv.2025.0754 |
| OpenAlex | W4406330156 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
This article argues that Children, Madonna and Child and Death and Transfiguration mark the emergence of Terence Davies’s unique and idiosyncratic approach to cinematic temporality and, in their dissolution of the traditional distinction between flashback and flashforward, encourage the emergence of a formal approach that works to express the complex relationship between the adult homosexual and the queer child. Via the work of Katherine Bond Stockton this article problematises the notion of the queer child as an ‘undead’ or ghostly figure that intrudes on or haunts the life of the adult and instead suggests that, in its temporal uncertainty and formal ingenuity, the Trilogy conceptualises the queer child as an unborn or newborn figure that comes into existence via present-tense acts of adult recollection and recognition. Central to this reading is an attempt to reposition the Trilogy as a triptych – a religiously inflected tripartite cultural object divided into three panels that encourages a circular or reciprocal engagement and asks the spectator to read across the three elements of the work rather than through them as in a traditional linear narrative
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Psychoanalysis · Queer · Queer theory · Sociology · Temporalities · Temporality · Theology · Trilogy · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · History · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |