ABSTRACT

Drawing from Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the “chronotope”, the lecture explores the dynamic ways by which spatial and temporal features which are often marginalized in traditional literary studies play a dominant role in structuring the aesthetic of a narrative. Among such features is “setting” as it is often assumed to be merely a passive backdrop of a story as opposed to, say, plot or characters that are often assumed to play a dominant role in narrative framing. But as spatiotemporally configured, in selected Southeast Asian fictional texts which will be the focus of this lecture, such often-neglected features as setting embody distinct if ambivalent chronotopic images, throwing the narrative features asunder, even as they are held together by the very chronotope of the setting itself. Out of this chronotopic tension, potentially generated are the narrative’s “textual” affective significance and “contextual” thematic relevance.