In literary theory and philosophy of language, the chronotope is how configurations of time and space are represented in language and discourse. The term was taken up by Russian literary scholar M.M. Bakhtin who used it as a central element in his theory of meaning in language and literature. The term itself comes from the Russian xронотоп, which in turn is derived from the Greek χρόνος and τόπος ; it thus can be literally translated as "time-space." Bakhtin developed the term in his 1937 essay "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel". Here Bakhtin showed how different literary genres operated with different configurations of time and space, which gave each genre its particular narrative character. For example, the chronotopic frame of the epic differed from that of the hero adventure or the comedy.
Definition
In the philosophy of language and philology, Bakhtin scholars Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist state that the chronotope is "a unit of analysis for studying language according to the ratio and characteristics of the temporal and spatial categories represented in that language". Specific chronotopes are said to correspond to particular genres, or relatively stable ways of speaking, which themselves represent particular worldviews or ideologies. To this extent, a chronotope is both a cognitive concept and a narrative feature of language. In "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," Bakhtin defines the chronotope thus:
Examples
The concept of the chronotope has been most widely used in literary studies. The scholar Timo Müller for example argued that analysis of chronotopes highlights the environmental dimension of literary texts because it draws attention to the concrete physical spaces in which stories take place. Müller discusses the chronotope of the road, which for Bakhtin was a meeting place but in recent literature no longer brings people together in this way because automobiles have changed the way we perceive the time and space of the road. Car drivers want to minimize the time they spend on the road. They are rarely interested in the road as a physical space, the natural environment around the road, or the environmental implications of their driving. This contrasts with earlier literary examples such as Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" or John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, where the road is described as part of the natural environment and the travelers are interested in that environment. Linguistic anthropologistKeith Basso invoked "chronotopes" in discussing Western stories linked with places. In the 1980s when Basso was writing, 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 '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". Anthropologist of syncretism Safet HadžiMuhamedović built upon Bakhtin’s term in his ethnography of the Field of Gacko in the southeastern Bosnian highlands. In , he argued that people and landscapes may sometimes be trapped between timespaces and thus "schizochronotopic". He described two overarching chronotopes as "collective timespace themes", both of which relied on certain kinds of past and laid claims to the Field’s future. One was told through proximities, the other through distances between religious communities. For HadžiMuhamedović, schizochronotopia is a rift occurring within the same body/landscape, through which the past and the present of place have rendered each other unbidden. The chronotope has also been adopted for the analysis of classroom events and conversations, for example by Raymond Brown and Peter Renshaw in order to view "student participation in the classroom as a dynamic process constituted through the interaction of past experience, ongoing involvement, and yet-to-be-accomplished goals". Kumpulainen, Mikkola, and Jaatinen examined the space–time configurations of students’ technology-mediated creative learning practices over a year-long school musical project in a Finnish elementary school. The findings of their study suggest that "blended practices appeared to break away from traditional learning practices, allowing students to navigate in different time zones, spaces, and places with diverse tools situated in their formal and informal lives".
