You are here

FAU Collections » FAU Research Repository » FAU Theses and Dissertations

Narrating the chronotope of the saint: Ordinary time in the novel

Download pdf | Full Screen View

Date Issued:
2001
Summary:
All narratives in which the human image is presented establish an interconnectedness of time and space, what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the chronotope. When Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables, he drew upon a historical chronotope originating in the narratives that accompanied the spread of Christianity, and which found its purest distillate in the genre of hagiography---the narrating of the lives of saints. When the mode of sacred time established in the conventionally brief hagiologic narrative, which depended on a linear progression having unity with God as its end, is integrated into the extended form of the novel, it finds itself at odds with the ubiquitous adventure time---the random disjunctions of time and space without which there is no plot. The delineated spaces of roads and gardens in Les Miserables serve to concretize the mediation between these two modes of time, resulting in the ordinary time of the novel.
Title: Narrating the chronotope of the saint: Ordinary time in the novel.
183 views
51 downloads
Name(s): Mason, Eric Daniel.
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
Faraci, Mary, Thesis advisor
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 2001
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 84 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: All narratives in which the human image is presented establish an interconnectedness of time and space, what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the chronotope. When Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables, he drew upon a historical chronotope originating in the narratives that accompanied the spread of Christianity, and which found its purest distillate in the genre of hagiography---the narrating of the lives of saints. When the mode of sacred time established in the conventionally brief hagiologic narrative, which depended on a linear progression having unity with God as its end, is integrated into the extended form of the novel, it finds itself at odds with the ubiquitous adventure time---the random disjunctions of time and space without which there is no plot. The delineated spaces of roads and gardens in Les Miserables serve to concretize the mediation between these two modes of time, resulting in the ordinary time of the novel.
Identifier: 9780493218397 (isbn), 12796 (digitool), FADT12796 (IID), fau:9672 (fedora)
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2001.
Subject(s): Hagiography
Time in literature
Narration (Rhetoric)
Hugo, Victor,--1802-1885--Misérables
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12796
Sublocation: Digital Library
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.