The chronotope as a formally constitutive category determines to a significant degree the image of man in literature as well. It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary category in the chronotope is time. The chronotope in literature has an intrinsic generic significance. We understand the chronotope as a formally constitutive category of literature we will not deal with the chronotope in other areas of culture. What counts for us is the fact that it expresses the inseparability of space and time (time as the fourth dimension of space). The special meaning it has in relativity theory is not important for our purposes we are borrowing it for literary criticism almost as a metaphor (almost, but not entirely).

This term is employed in mathematics, and was introduced as part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. We will give the name chronotope (literally, 'time space') to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature. In the essay Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel, Bakhtin describes his use of the term thus: Specific chronotopes are said to correspond to particular genres, or relatively stable ways of speaking, which themselves represent particular worldviews or ideologies. Bakhtin's concept is a way of analyzing literary texts that reveals the forces operating in the cultural system from which they emanate. They argue that Bakhtin's concept differs from other uses of time and space in literary analysis because neither category is given a privileged status: they are inseparable and entirely interdependent. Д«akhtin scholars Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist state that the chronotope is 'a unit of analysis for studying language according to the ratio and characteristics of the temporal and spatial categories represented in that language'. Genre is rooted in how one perceives the flow of events and its representation of particular worldviews or ideologies. For Bakhtin, chronotope is the conduit through which meaning enters the logosphere.

Bakhtin chronotope example