Page 209 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 18: Mikhail Bakhtin and his ‘From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse (Textual Analysis with Chronotopes...

particular genres, or relatively stable ways of speaking, which themselves represent particular Notes
world views or ideologies. To this extent, a chronotope is both a cognitive concept and a narrative
feature of language.
In the Dialogic Imagination, Bakhtin defines the Chronotope:
We will give the name chronotope (literally, "time space") to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal
and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature. This term [space-time] is
employed in mathematics, and was introduced as part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The
special meaning it has in relativity theory is not important for our purposes; we are borrowing it
for literary criticism almost as a metaphor (almost, but not entirely). What counts for us is the fact
that it expresses the inseparability of space and time (time as the fourth dimension of space). We
understand the chronotope as a formally constitutive category of literature; we will not deal with
the chronotope in other areas of culture.' In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal
indicators are fused into 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
movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes
the artistic chronotope. The chronotope in literature has an intrinsic generic significance. It can
even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions, for in
literature the primary category in the chronotope is time. The chronotope as a formally constitutive
category determines to a significant degree the image of man in literature as well. The image of
man is always intrinsically chronotopic.
Analysis
The distinctiveness of chronotopic analysis, in comparison to most other uses of time and space in
language analysis, stems from the fact that neither time nor space is privileged by Bakhtin, they
are utterly interdependent and they should be studied in this manner.
Linguistic anthropologist Keith Basso invoked "chronotopes" in discussing Western [Apache] stories
linked with places. At least in the 1980s when Basso was writing about the stories, geographic
features reminded the Western Apache of "the moral teachings of their history" by recalling to
mind events that occurred there in important moral narratives. By merely mentioning "it happened
at [the place called] 'men stand above here and there,'" storyteller Nick Thompson could remind
locals of the dangers of joining "with outsiders against members of their own community."
Geographic features in the Western Apache landscape are chronotopes, Basso says, in precisely
the way Bakhtin defines the term when he says they are "points in the geography of a community
where time and space intersect and fuse. Time takes on flesh and becomes visible for human
contemplation; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time
and history and the enduring character of a people. ...Chronotopes thus stand as monuments to
the community itself, as symbols of it, as forces operating to shape its members' images of
themselves".
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays
In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays Bakhtin moves away from the novel and concerns himself
with the problems of method and the nature of culture. There are six essays that comprise this
compilation: "Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff", "The Bildungsroman and
Its Significance in the History of Realism", "The Problem of Speech Genres", "The Problem of the
Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis",
"From Notes Made in 1970-71," and "Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences."
"Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff" is a transcript of comments made by
Bakhtin to a reporter from a monthly journal called Novy Mir that was widely read by Soviet
intellectuals. The transcript expresses Bakhtin's opinion of literary scholarship whereby he highlights
some of its shortcomings and makes suggestions for improvement.
"The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism" is a fragment from one of
Bakhtin's lost books. The publishing house to which Bakhtin had submitted the full manuscript
was blown up during the German invasion and Bakhtin was in possession of only the prospectus.

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