H.A. van der Liet

Abstract: Speech and Chronotope in Peer Hultberg's Novel Byen og Verden IN THIS ARTICLE, I will take a look at the novel Byen og Verden (1992) [The City and the World], by Peer Hultberg (b. 1935) using it as the springboard for a discussion of the Bakhtinian concept of the chronotope with special attention to its importance vis-a-vis modernist prose or, more precisely, as a kind of text which seems to resist some of the principal traditional generic features of novelistic discourse. And, because Hultberg's oeuvre is scarcely known in the English-speaking world, I shall say a few words about it here as well.(1) Chronotope is without doubt one of Bakhtin's most difficult neologisms, but, at the same time, the chronotope--rightly or wrongly--seems to be one of Bakhtin's most obvious and easy-to-handle concepts in practical terms. How fundamental the chronotope is to Bakhtin is evident from the fact that, at the beginning of his essay, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope," he refers to Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft (85) and, thus, reminds us of the fact that time and space are fundamental categories--a priori circumstances--that precede all forms of cognition. Or as Kant puts it, "Der Raum ist eine notwendige Vorstellung apriori, die allen au[Beta]eren Anschauungen zum Grunde liegt" (B38); and a similar formulation is used for time: "Die Ziet ist kein empirischer Begriff, der irgend von einer Erfahrung abgezogen worden.... Die Ziet ist also apriori gegeben" (846). Without actually mentioning the word chronotope, Bakhtin circles closely around related issues in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Here he notes that narrative in Dostoevsky is often concentrated around certain points in the temporal development of the story which are also linked to clearly discernible spatial signs (169-70). These so-called points where space and time are intertwined--where time and space touch each other, so to speak, and permeate each other--have a particularly strong structural function in the texts with which Bakhtin deals. Essential to his concept of the chronotope is the fact that these temporal and spatial intersections not only have topographic significance--in the sense that they are needed to enhance the mimetic linking of narrative to a three-dimensional universe--but they function as modes of structuring the temporal progression of the narrative as well. This way of analyzing spatial and temporal aspects in Dostoevsky's novels may, as a matter of fact, be called a semiotic approach, which Bakhtin later elaborates in the essay, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel." Here he defines a chronotope as "the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature" (84). Thus, the chronotope appears to be a tool to detect topological patterns in a literary work which operate as associative as well as cognitive points of reference. In other words, a chronotope is a textual phenomena that crystallizes action and the meaning of action. When a certain chronotope is used intensely and over a long period of time--as in metaphor--it becomes easily recognizable and tends to turn into a static, topos-like pattern with more or less fixed meanings and appearance.(2) Examples Bakhtin mentions are the "castle" and the "road," but this series is easily expandable. Imagine as chronotopes the "hospital," the "railroad car," or the "ship," locations that have all become possessed of connoted, generic attributes--relatively fixed chronotopic literary icons--that steer certain motifs, genres, or literary stereotypes and supply the text with an unusually concentrated aesthetic and narrative economy. Fixed chronotopes serve the reader with a set of more or less stable tools for understanding the text, if the recipient is actually able to understand the concentrated code. Bakhtin formulates this view as follows: Thus the chronotope, functioning as a primary means for materializing time in space, emerges as a center for concretizing representation, as a force giving body to the entire novel. …

Abstract: The research observes the representation of the alien city chronotope in Jazz (1992) by a contemporary American writer Toni Morrison. The narration of the novel occurs in Harlem (New York) in the 1920-s, however, because most characters’ identities originate in the mid-19th-century American South, time and space frames extend. Focusing on the city space in the novel Jazz we regard the city as a social and cultural phenomenon of America, an independent live character that enters into a dialogue with the novel’s protagonists and, at the same time, contributes to their alienation within its frames. Harlem of 1920s functions not only as sociohistorical background but also as a unique narrator that relates the urban experience of African-Americans. We deduce that the chronotope exhibited in the novel in question combines several places and embodies narration about protagonists’ roots, their original habitat and a new conflicting environment that both attracts and repels them. The intrinsic ties of time and space in the literary work discussed in the article are presented on the level of the city, which represents alien and fragmentized reality. Thus we are convinced that the alien city chronotope in the novel is shaped by the opposition of ethnic and cultural identities of characters within their changing world. The characters’ illusions and aspirations are guided by the dubious and forceful voice of the city and none of the protagonists is able to escape the traumatic labyrinth of time and space tracing their memory. Keywords: chronotope; city space; alien; identity; novel

Abstract: The relationship between a cinematic adaptation and its literary source has sparked scholarly debates in the field of adaptation studies. Developed by the Russian literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), dialogism can shed new light on the adaptation-source tie as it highlights the mutual interaction between the two sides. The present study argues that Al Pacino and Richard Loncraine’s versions of William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1593) stress such a dialogic aspect of the adaptation process. Within this dialogic framework, Pacino’s Looking for Richard (1996) establishes a heteroglossial relation with the play as it seeks to eliminate the gap between Shakespeare and the movie’s modern viewers. Loncraine’s Richard III (1995), however, is marked by a significant chronotopic strategy which situates Richard in new social and political contexts through a change in the play’s temporal and spatial elements.

Abstract: Already during his lifetime, H. C. Andersen was an international literary celebrity and a well-known author through the vast proliferation of his work. Through his travels, Andersen was able to cross and transgress spatial, temporal and social borders and expand his international social network far beyond his home country. While travelling Andersen became profoundly aware of the fact that he represented two fundamentally different modalities of travel, as he on the one hand embodied the quintessential nineteenth century bourgeois traveler, while he on the other hand, as part of his personal background, inescapably was connected to its opposite: the underlying social image of the tramp. This article takes a closer look at Hans Christian Andersen’s first book-length literary work, Fodreise fra Holmens Canal til Ostpynten af Amager i Aarene 1828 og 1829 (1829), offering special attention to the meaning of the theme of travel – notably travel on foot – understanding Fodreise as a liminal work in the evolution of Andersen’s oeuvre.