Bakhtin and the dialogical imagination

Mikhail Bakhtin was a theoretician of literature who was originally researching the concept of the novel. In his work he reveals that the novel is not simply a literary genre nor even an antigenre, but is more akin to a force. In this reading session of the theory course we are going to work on the concept of the "chronotope" (time-space). Bakhtin defines chronotope as “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”.