In practical terms, the chronotope

In practical terms, the chronotope describes the way that narrative is staged in space and time. Indeed, Bakhtin suggestively describes the chronotope as a way of “giving flesh” to narrative: “In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history” (84). In suggesting that the raw story outline of a narrative “takes on flesh,” Bakhtin rightly implies that the way that a narrative will imagine space and time is inherently linked to the way that it positions bodies within that space. The concept of the chronotope implicitly argues that all events must take place somewhere and through some notion of time, and in describing such a setting as aprocess of giving the narrative flesh, Bakhtin reminds us how important these spatio-temporal positions are to the body. In a very straightforward sense, bodies demand that space and time be made meaningful, since in that time/space, that chronotope, characters will choose, act, and anticipate consequences.