Introduction

Time is a theme which consumes writers. In less than 10 seconds, you have read an old familiar nursery rhyme. Of course, those ten seconds occurred 20 seconds ago by now. In any case, that time is past. It is irretrievably spent. You cannot go back and choose to spend it differently or alter an outcome of events. Or can you?

On the other hand, what about the sands that have yet to drop through the hourglass? How will you spend them? What does the future hold? Is it predictable or knowable? Writers have grappled with these ideas for centuries.

In this unit, you will be working with literature which is centered on the themes of past, present and future. You will experience several different literary perceptions of the past and the future by reading ancient literature, as well as very modern literature.