The Carnivalistic-Dialogic Chronotope Of How Far Can You Go?

As one of the preeminent British novelist-critics, David Lodge is highly conscious of the application of critic theory in literary creation and vice versa. Among all critic theories which he applauds in later career the most significant one is Bakhtin's Theory of Dialogism, for it has greatly changed the monologic facet of his thinking mode. From the Bakhtinian cultural perspective, especially the part concerning his concept of chronotope, the present thesis attempts to approach one of his most important works——How Far Can You Go? precisely as a canon whose time-space scheme consists of diverse voices or elements such as narrative time and historical time, the square and the threshold and so forth and thus aims to initiate a discussion on the inner interplay of its time-space defined herein by the author as the"carnivalistic-dialogic chronotope".Chapter One introduces the topic of this thesis and the status quo of related research in China and abroad,and throws light on the notion of the carnival and the chronotope and the association between them. Chapter Two takes spatial concept in traditional Chinese culture as a contrastive paradigm and comes to a conclusion that in contrast to the introversive and centripetal nature of Chinese people with a notion of closeness and accumulation, westerners are more extroversive and centrifugal: in literary works such as How Far Can You Go? their inclination of action and pugnacity requires an expanse of space for conflict, and their sensitivity to tension and notion of concentration leads to narrow space for crisis and shift. Chapter Three focuses on two significant facets of the chronotope in How Far Can You Go? : The threshold (doorways, entrance ways, staircases, corridors, and so forth), where the crisis and the turning point occur, and the public square, whose substitute is usually the drawing room (the hall, the dining room), where the catastrophe and the scandal take place. Lodge's artistic conception of space is characterized by the integral interaction of the two facets of the chronotope in one plane and the undeveloped and reduced(in contrast to the typical carnival literature produced by Dostoevsky and Rabelais)yet constantly changing carnival undertone. The interplay between the threshold and the square has three distinct characteristics: 1)Change in a threshold is originally connected with that in a square; 2)There is a clear evolving scenic course from the threshold to the square; 3)Illustrations of quasi-threshold change taking place on a square are pervasive in the novel. Space shifts from some narrow place to the square in that the contradiction between private persons and public forms leads to the fact that the quintessentially private life that enters the novel is, opposed to public life, positioned in a closed place, such as the threshold (though a closed place is not necessarily the threshold, for the latter by its essence is saturated with the dialogic spirit while sometimes the former is opposite). This situation lasts until in the latter part of How Far Can You Go? the conflict is further reconciled (while not completely reconciled, for according to the Theory of Dialogism contradiction as the basis of dialogue can never be reconciled) through the characters'transformation from private persons to public men on the public square. Chapter Four analyzes a distinct phenomenon concerning literary time in How Far Can You Go?——digression, which can be divided into two catagories:1) Historical background is taken as source of digression, which not only breaks narrative time, but blurs the dividing line between fictional and real-life time-space. This is quite similar to the cardboard game of"bird flying into the cave"and the zootrope. The way Lodge deals with time in How Far Can You Go? is different from above-mentioned tricks only in that the latter resorts to the succession of sensual effect resulting from the interaction between separate and slightly different pictures adjacent in time, while Lodge throws light on the confusion and classification fallacy caused by the interrelation of time or chronotopes adjacent in the text; 2) Author-introducing digression which"breaks the frame". Herein the linear time structure is subverted and decrowned, the richer human experience could only be elaborated through lines which is not straight or uninterrupted. The mixing, confusion and then differentiation of fictive time and historical time yields a strong textual tension, and scaffolds the dialogue between narration and digression, fiction and history, realism and postmodernism. Furthermore, for David Lodge, the square and the threshold are the places of intersection of temporal and spatial sequences, which also enter into the dialogic sphere of the carnivalesque. Finally we come to a conclusion that How Far Can You Go? is saturated with the dialogic spirit and the carnival sense of world , and its carnivalistic-dialogic chronotope forms a narrative realm to scaffold dialogues, among which the most significant are dialogues between the threshold and the public square as two facets of the chronotope,private persons and public forms, narration and digression(or fiction and history), the temporal and spatial sequences, realism and postmodernism and so forth.