Bart Keunen

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.

It’s a Kind of Magic: World Construction in French Surrealist and Belgian Magical Realist Fiction and Cinema

In comparing Surrealist cinema and literature with that of magical realism, one cannot escape the impression that in magical realism some of the Surrealist magic is lost. In an attempt to explain this loss, this chapter compares the ways in which the two movements interpret reality by means of images.

World Cities and Second Cities: Imagining Growth and Hybridity in Modern Literature

Second cities can be analyzed by means of two models of scaling, based on either temporal or spatial parameters. The first model uses growth (an evolution in time) as a central metaphor and can be found in the Mumfordian vocabulary of urban theory (polis, metropolis, megalopolis). It concentrates on the economical expansion within modern capitalism and on the technological and sociale side effects of the economical modernization process. The second model, which is only implicitly used in contemporary theory, is based on a different metaphor that stems from physics. By viewing urban phenomena as “states of matter” (spatial states that are lucidly called “states of aggregation” in Dutch and German) they can be conceived more easily as heterogeneous forms of urbanity in late modern society. Moreover, urban forms can within this frame of reference be more adequately seen as fundamentally hybrid, as a combination of different “states of aggregation”. The notion of “second city” differs greatly when used in one of both discursive contexts. Most commonly, second cities are defined in terms relating to the growth model but recent reflections on what I would like to call “the mediopolis” opt for the alternative contextualization. Artistic representations of second cities seem firmly rooted in the first discursive context. Nevertheless, some inspiring instantiations of the literary city escape from this powerful model. If one looks closer at the representation of urban life in recent Western literature, one can find accounts of urbanity that reflect a fundamental hybridity.

Rethinking European Identity through a Triptych of Literary Heroes

This article explores the concept of ‘Europe’ by using it as a synecdoche for ‘modernity’. The point of departure is Antonio Negri and Michael Hardts postulate that one can distinguish two Europes and two modernities. Modernity is, on the one hand, the historical tendency towards totalization and exclusion, and, on the other hand, the opposite penchant for fragmentation and anarchic ‘liberative’ thinking. On the basis of this duality, one can talk of a syndrome of modernity, a cultural condition that is determined by the coincidence of two views on sovereignty (self-coercion and self-determination). The article relates the theory of ‘two Europes’ to three historical forms of cultural identity and in particular to the ideals of normality which are involved in them.

De lege stad in literatuur en fotografie: van romantische utopie naar kritische heteretopie

Usually, the metropolis is associated with kaleidoscopic density. Both the modern novel and street photography celebrate the urban bustle. This essay, however, focuses on the motif of the deserted city that also has been important in various artistic disciplines. In photography, the motif originated from technical limitations but quickly turned into a token of aesthetic sophistication. Often, these pictures played with or were based on aroused associations that were also part of literary urban images. By means of the motif of the empty city, three kinds of critical positions vis-h-vis modernity were developed. First, a romantic hostility to the city, which is interiorised in the city itself Second, a proto-modernist attitude accepting urbanization and adapting the romantic sublime to modernity. Third, by referring to dreams and hallucinations, the empty city produces a heterotopic: alternative to the rationalized spaces of the everyday.

The Avant-Garde and Modern Sovereignty. By Way of Introduction

Abstract To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal life. Pico della Mirandola, Speech on the Dignity of Man (1487)