Time Travel as a Tool for Promoting Trans-Scalar Thinking

Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in how the different spatial and temporal scales on which environmental changes and other phenomena play out are represented in literature and film, and the roles which these might play in the educative process of training the public in trans-scalar thinking. Most of the works discussed have been taken from American and British writing. However, fostering trans-scalar thinking is a global concern. This chapter explores how the interweaving of narratives set in different times and time travel are used as ways of bridging the gap between the scales of individuals' experience and the slow, planetary changes resulting from cumulative human impact on the environment in the Anthropocene, in four novels: Franz Friedrich's Die Meisen auf Uusimaa singen nicht mehr (On Uusimaa the Tits No Longer Sing, 2014), Jostein Gaarder's The World According to Anna (2015), Carl Amery's Die Wallfahrer (The Pilgrims, 1986) and Wolfgang Jeschke's The Cusanus Game (2013).