The Chronotopic Imagination in Literature and Film

In this contribution, I would like to examine the way in which Bakhtin, in the two essays dedicated to the chronotope, lays the foundations for a theory of literary imagination. […] His concept of the chronotope may be interpreted as a contribution to a tradition in which Henri Bergson, William James, Charles Sander Peirce and Gilles Deleuze have been key figures. Like these four authors, Bakhtin is a philosopher in the school of pragmatism. His predilection for what Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson have called “prosaics” puts him right at the heart of a philosophical family that calls forth multiplicity against metaphysical essentialism, and prefers the mundane to the universal. It seems wise to proceed carefully in the attempt to reconstruct Bakhtin’s theory of imagination. In this contribution to the debate, I choose to develop a philosophical dialogue between Bakhtin and the above-mentioned philosophical family. More specifically, it seems to me that the ideal point of departure for examining the way in which Bakhtin attempts to get to the bottom of the mysteries of literary imagination is Gilles Deleuze’s synthesis of Bergson’s epistemological view on knowledge as “the perception of images”, as well as Peirce’s theory of experience based on a typology of images. In the following, I show that Bakhtin’s view of the temporal-spatial constellations in literature demonstrates a strong affinity to the Bergsonian view that perception of the spatial world is colored by the lived time experienced by the observer. Based on this observation, I then develop a typology of images which places the concept of the chronotope in a more systematic framework

Tell-tale Landscapes and Mythical Chronotopes in Urban Designs for Twenty-first Century Paris

In their article Tell-tale Landscapes and Mythical Chronotopes in Urban Designs for Twenty-first Century Paris Bart Keunen and Sofie Verraest outline a methodology for the examination of narrative structures projected onto landscapes and exemplify it by analyzing four urbanist projects submitted for the international workshop for Greater Paris launched by President of France Nicholas Sarkozy in 2009. Keunen and Verraest focus on phantasmagorical urban spaces considered to be profane remnants of what Ernst Cassirer referred to as mythical thought. Since the spatiotemporal structure of these phantasmagorical places is understood as fundamental to their affective appeal and seductiveness, they are treated as Bakhtinian chronotopes. Four chronotopes — the oasis, the capsule, the hub, and the bazaar — are thus exposed as the cornerstones of urbanists\u27 rhetoric strategies

Bakhtin’s theory of the literary chronotope: reflections, applications, perspectives

This edited volume is the first scholarly tome exclusively dedicated to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the literary chronotope. This concept, initially developed in the 1930s and used as a frame of reference throughout Bakhtin’s own writings, has been highly influential in literary studies. After an extensive introduction that serves as a ‘state of the art’, the volume is divided into four main parts: Philosophical Reflections, Relevance of the Chronotope for Literary History, Chronotopical Readings and Some Perspectives for Literary Theory. These thematic categories contain contributions by well-established Bakhtin specialists such as Gary Saul Morson and Michael Holquist, as well as a number of essays by scholars who have published on this subject before. Together the papers in this volume explore the implications of Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope for a variety of theoretical topics such as literary imagination, polysystem theory and literary adaptation; for modern views on literary history ranging from the hellenistic romance to nineteenth-century realism; and for analyses of well-known novelists and poets as diverse as Milton, Fielding, Dickinson, Dostoevsky, Papadiamandis and DeLill

Bakhtin's theory of the literary chronotope: reflections, applications, perspectives

This edited volume is the first scholarly tome exclusively dedicated to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the literary chronotope. This concept, initially developed in the 1930s and used as a frame of reference throughout Bakhtin’s own writings, has been highly influential in literary studies. After an extensive introduction that serves as a ‘state of the art’, the volume is divided into four main parts: Philosophical Reflections, Relevance of the Chronotope for Literary History, Chronotopical Readings and Some Perspectives for Literary Theory. These thematic categories contain contributions by well-established Bakhtin specialists such as Gary Saul Morson and Michael Holquist, as well as a number of essays by scholars who have published on this subject before. Together the papers in this volume explore the implications of Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope for a variety of theoretical topics such as literary imagination, polysystem theory and literary adaptation; for modern views on literary history ranging from the hellenistic romance to nineteenth-century realism; and for analyses of well-known novelists and poets as diverse as Milton, Fielding, Dickinson, Dostoevsky, Papadiamandis and DeLillo

Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives

This edited volume is the first scholarly tome exclusively dedicated to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the literary chronotope. This concept, initially developed in the 1930s and used as a frame of reference throughout Bakhtin’s own writings, has been highly influential in literary studies. After an extensive introduction that serves as a ‘state of the art’, the volume is divided into four main parts: Philosophical Reflections, Relevance of the Chronotope for Literary History, Chronotopical Readings and Some Perspectives for Literary Theory. These thematic categories contain contributions by well-established Bakhtin specialists such as Gary Saul Morson and Michael Holquist, as well as a number of essays by scholars who have published on this subject before. Together the papers in this volume explore the implications of Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope for a variety of theoretical topics such as literary imagination, polysystem theory and literary adaptation; for modern views on literary history ranging from the hellenistic romance to nineteenth-century realism; and for analyses of well-known novelists and poets as diverse as Milton, Fielding, Dickinson, Dostoevsky, Papadiamandis and DeLillo

Negen muzen, tien geboden. Historische en methodologische gevalstudies over de interactie tussen literatuur en ethiek

Literature traditionally holds a special place in society. This fact can be ascribed especially to literature’s unique capability to urge its audience and readers to allow a voice other than their own to resound within. And yet, literature’s role raises questions regarding one’s responsibility and engagement – questions that nearly every generation asks itself time and again with an ever changing urgency. Eight literary scholars from the research group ‘Literature – Ethics – Law’ (Ghent University) focus on this complex dialogue between literature and ethics. In the process, they arrive at answers that tease out crucial historical developments (from Plato to HIV/AIDS-prose), while also attending to the impact of methodological reevaluations during the search for such answers

Bakhtin, Genre Formation, and the Cognitive Turn: Chronotopes as Memory Schemata

In his article, Bakhtin, Genre Formation, and the Cognitive Turn: Chronotopes as Memory Schemata, Bart Keunen proposes a new reading of Bakhtin\u27s notion of the chronotope. Bakhtin is widely taken to be a pioneer of genological thinking, but one of his key concepts -- the chronotope -- is still subject to highly divergent interpretations. Moreover, the epistemological implications of his genology have not yet been fully realized. In this article, a methodological grounding in schema theory is proposed. Bakhtin\u27s concept can be used to study the way in which literary communication functions through what the psychologist Frederic Bartlett first called memory schemata. These schemata can be seen to operate on two levels: The level of textual motifs (the thematological dimension of texts) and that of fictional world models (the genological dimension). The development of Bakhtin\u27s writings shows that genre distinctions are to be considered a fundamental instrument for literary communication and that this instrument is to be understood as working implicitly by means of mnemonic associations made by text producers and readers. The distinction between the thematological and genological aspects of the construction of fictional worlds can be clarified by linking them respectively to the concept of action schemata and to that of textual superstructures. Such an adaptation of the chronotope concept can be further linked to methodological tendencies within current interpretation theory, genology, and literary historiography