Chronotope

Some parts: Bakhtin, M. M. Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel: notes toward a historical poetics

p. 15

We will give the name chronotope (literally, “time space”) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature […] What couts for us is the fact that it expresses the inseparability of space and time (time as the fourth dimesion of space). We understand the chonotope as a formally constitutive category of literature.

In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicatora are fused innto one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movemets of time, plot, and history.

… in literature the primary category in the chronotope is time.

p. 16

… the image of men in literature ia always intrinsically chronotopic.

p. 17

Encouters in a novel usually take place “on the road”. The road is particularly good place for ranndom enounters. O the road (“the high road”) the spatial and temporal paths of the most varied people – represetatives of all social classes, estates, religions, nationalities, ages – intersect at one spatial and temporal point.People who are normally kept separate by social and spatial distance can accidently meet […] the collapse of social distances.

The road is especially (ut not exclusively) appropriate for portaying events governed by chance.

p. 18

… one cruccial feature of the “road” common to all the various types of ovels we have covered : the road is always one that passes through familiar territory, and not through some exotic alien world […] it is the sociohistorical heterogeneity that is revealed and depicted —> the social exotic (εδώ ο “δρόμος” έχει συγκεκριμένα χαρακτηριστικά και ξεχωρίζει αυτό το είδος μυθιστορήματος από άλλα ταξιδιωτικά μυθιστορήματα)

p. 19

the space of parlors and salons ( the arometer of political and business life): webs of intrigue are spun, denouement occur and finally dialogues happen something that acquires extraordinary importance in the novel, revealing the character, “idea” and “passions” of the heroes.

p. 20

the provincial town (βλ. Flaubert, Chekhov…): the locus of cyclical everyday life

p. 21

the chronotope of threshold: highly charged with emotion and value; it can be combined with the motif of encounter, but its most fundametal instance is as a chrootope of crisis annd break in life. In literature this chronotope is always metaphorical and symbolic in an eplicit or implicit way. Example Dostoevsky: staircase, front hall and corridor as well as street and square that extend those spaces into the open air.

In this chronotope time is instantaneous; it is as if it has no duration and falls out of the normal course of biographical time.

p. 22 (διάβασε και επόμενες σελίδες)

Chronotopes are the organizing centers for the fundamental narrative evets of the novel […] to them belongs the meaning that shapes the narrative […] Time becomes in effect palpale and visible …