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Abstract  The study traces the evolution of the concept of time from ancient to postmodern times. It explores how great philosophers, theoreticians and scientists have treated the idea of time during different periods. The research finds out that despite the variegated nature of the development of the concept of time, much of human history has observed alternate periods of the linear, teleological and cyclical, non-teleological conceptions of time. The study has established that the same alternating trends mainly influence the human perception of time during the modern and postmodern eras. It also indicates that the progressive and teleological view of time resonates well with the spirit of the modern age. On the other hand, the research argues that the perpetual present, as a non-teleological notion of time, predominates the postmodern time-world.

In this paper we carry out a comparative analysis of selected texts of modernists T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats and postmodernists Samuel Beckett and Graham Swift to determine the nature of their conflicting perspectives on the future. The study attempts to find out how the modernists' vision of the messiah and of history as a metanarrative indicates their sense of the end. Conversely, this analysis seeks to establish in what way the postmodernists' treatment of pseudomessiahs and history as a local narrative signifies their illusion of the end.The End is a fact of life and a fact of imagination. 1 We have to get used to the idea that there is no end any longer, there will no longer be any end, that history itself has become interminable. 2