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The Fugue of Chronotope
(2010)
As the survey by Nele Bemong and Pieter Borghart introducing this volume makes clear, the term chronotope has devolved into a veritable carnival of orismology. For all the good work that has been done by an ever-growing number of intelligent critics, chronotope remains a Gordian knot of ambiguities with no Alexander in sight. The term has metastasized across the whole spectrum of the human and social sciences since the publication of FTC in Russian in 1975, and (especially) after its translation into English in 1981. As others have pointed out, one of the more striking features of the chronotope is the plethora of meanings that have been read into the term: that its popularity is a function of its opacity has become a cliché. In the current state of chronotopic heteroglossia, then, how are we to proceed? The argument of this essay is that many of the difficulties faced by Bakhtin’s critics derive from ambiguities with which Bakhtin never ceased to struggle. That is, instead of advancing yet another definition of my own, I will investigate some of the attempts made by Bakhtin himself to give the term greater precision throughout his long life. In so doing, I will also hope to cast some light on the foundational role of time-space in Bakhtin’s philosophy of dialog as it, too, took on different meanings at various points in his thinking.
Bakhtin argues that each literary genre codifies a particular world-view which is defined, in part, by its chronotope. That is, the spatial and temporal configurations of each genre determine in large part the kinds of action a fictional character may undertake in that given world (without being iconoclastic, a realist hero cannot slay mythical beasts, and a questing knight cannot philosophize over drinks in a café). Recent extensions of Bakhtin’s theory have sought to define the chronotopes of new and emergent genres such as the road movie, the graphic novel, and hypertext fiction. Others have challenged Bakhtin’s characterization of certain chronotopes, such as those of epic and lyric poetry, arguing that these genres (and their chronotopes) are far more dynamic and dialogic than Bakhtin’s analysis seems at first glance to allow. Rather than taking issue with Bakhtin’s characterization of particular genres here, however, I wish to argue that we should pay closer attention to the heterochrony, or interplay of different chronotopes, in individual texts and their genres. As Bakhtin’s own essay demonstrates, what makes any literary chronotope dynamic is its conflict and interplay with alternative chronotopes and world-views. Heterochrony (raznovremennost) is the spatiotemporal equivalent of linguistic heteroglossia, and if we examine any of Bakhtin’s readings of particular chronotopes closely enough, we will find evidence of heterochronic conflict. This clash of spatiotemporal configurations within a text, or family of texts, provides the ground for the dialogic inter-illumination of opposing world-views.
This paper proposes a reflection on the potential of the chronotope as a heuristic tool in the field of adaptation studies. My goal is to situate the chronotope in the context of adaptation studies, specifically with regard to perhaps the most central treatise in the field of literary adaptation, Gérard Genette’s “Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree”, and to draw attention to perhaps one of the most overlooked works in the field of adaptation studies, Caryl Emerson’s chronotope-inspired “Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme”. I will demonstrate how the chronotope might be used in the study of literary adaptation by examining the relationships between Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe”, its historical sources, and Michel Tournier’s twentieth-century adaptation of the Robinson story, “Friday”. My analysis draws upon three of the semantic levels of the chronotope presented in the introduction to this volume: (1) chronotopic motifs linked to two opposing themes: enthusiasm for European colonial expansionism and skepticism regarding the supremacy of European culture; (2) major chronotopes that determine the narrative structure of a text; and (3) the way in which such major chronotopes may be linked to broader questions of genre.
In this contribution we try to probe the generic chronotope of realism, which, judging from its astonishing productivity in the nineteenth century and the profound impact it has had on literary evolution and theory ever since, can be designated nothing less than a hallmark in the general history of narrative. Although we are primarily concerned with the description of the principles of construction underlying the realistic, “documentary”, chronotope, we would also like to touch upon some of its rather evident, but still somewhat under-discussed similarities with the genre of historiography. For, despite an abundance of what could be called “touches of realism” in a plethora of literary texts and genres (both narrative and poetic) since the very beginnings of literary history itself, the direct germs of realism as it developed into a particular narrative genre or generic chronotope during the nineteenth century may well be situated in “prescientific” historiographical works such as those of Gibbon or Michelet.
The aim of this introductory article [to the volume of the same title], firstly, is to recapitulate the basic principles of Bakhtin’s initial theory as formulated in “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics” (henceforth FTC) and “The Bildungsroman and its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historic Typology of the Novel)” (henceforth BSHR). Subsequently, we present some relevant elaborations of Bakhtin’s initial concept and a number of applications of chronotopic analysis, closing our state of the art by outlining two perspectives for further investigation. Some of the issues which we touch upon receive more detailed treatment in other contributions to this volume. Others may offer perspectives for future Bakhtin scholarship.
One of the most fundamental problems of systemic approaches to literature is the question of how systemic principles might be translated into a manageable methodological framework. This contribution proposes that a combination of functionalistsystemic theories (in casu Itamar Even-Zohar’s Polysystem theory – especially the textually oriented versions – and the prototypical genre approach proposed by Dirk De Geest and Hendrik Van Gorp 1999) with Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope theory shows great promise in this respect. Since I am primarily interested in literary genres, the prototypical genre approach assumes a central position in my theoretical framework. My main argument is that Bakhtin’s chronotope concept offers interesting perspectives as a heuristic tool within a functionalist-systemic approach to genre studies, enabling the study not only of the constitutive elements of genre systems, but also of their mutual relations. Bakhtin’s own vague definitions of the concept somewhat hamper the process of putting it into practice for this purpose, but with the aid of the distinction between generic and motivic chronotopes, that problem can be solved. A detailed, comprehensive account of the theoretical premises underlying my proposal can be found in Bemong (under review); here I restrict myself to the basics.
This paper forms part of a larger, ongoing project, to investigate how certain narrative possibilities that seem to have crystallized for the first time in the ancient Greek novel have proved persistent and productive over time, undergoing subtle transformations during formative later periods in the history of the genre, notably the twelfth century (simultaneously in Old French and in Byzantine Greek) and the eighteenth (the time when, according to a narrower definition, the novel is said to originate). For the present, my more limited aim is to revisit the two main essays in which Bakhtin’s theory of the chronotope (and of the “historical poetics” of the novel) are developed, and to extrapolate what seem to me to the most significant and productive lines of his approach, both in general, and with specific reference to the ancient Greek novel. I will then attempt simultaneously to apply and to modify Bakhtin’s model, in the light of a reading of Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon and with reference to previous critiques. The final part of the paper examines how this approach can be productive for a reading of a much later text, often regarded as “foundational” for the modern development of the genre, especially in English, Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749).
A wall-sized canvas by Twombly hanging in a purpose-built pavilion by Renzo Piano, commissioned by the Menil Collection in Houston, bears the scrawled inscription »Anatomy of Melancholy.« Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) is the culminating statement of the artist’s maturity: begun in 1972, it was first exhibited in 1994. In this monumental cenotaph, Twombly’s painting displays phrases from Archilochos, Catullus, Keats and Rilke, as well as the title of Burton’s famous tome, worked into the fabric of the composition, integral to the iconic content. It is the aching heart of the select permanent exhibition of his oeuvre at the pavilion, known as the Twombly Gallery (www.menil.org/twombly.html). The austerity of Piano’s architectural setting, as well as the cunningly filtered Texas sunlight, makes this a site of cult, like the chapel containing the dark, final canvases of Mark Rothko, situated around the corner in the same urban grove of old oak. The setting is a modern Dodona, remote seat of the oaken oracle of Zeus, and it makes an evocative home for Twombly’s enigmatic constructions. These disarm conventional vocabularies of aesthetic response, drawing attention to words and snatches of verse as points of association and recognition. Looking at them involves siting a phrase such as »Anatomy of Melancholy« in other dimensions – in lines, patches, figures, colors.
The Book as a landscape
(2007)
There is a long tradition of regarding landscapes as texts and texts as landscapes. Characterizing visually experienced nature as a text implies stressing its meaningfulness, its character as a message or an expression. According to an old metaphor that was highly esteemed in medieval Christian culture as well as in early modem science, nature itself is a divine message addressed to mankind, analogously to the holy scriptures, revealing the will of God as the superior "author" to those who are able to decipher the signs. As a consequence of the process of secularization, art gains authority over the signs of nature, and it is the artist who creates messages by composing the elements of the visual world. The idea of interpreting texts as landscapes seems less evident at the first moment; it implies the notion of texts and landscapes as artificial products which depend on an individual human subject's intentions.