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Title

Bigger On the Inside: Codifying the Chronotope of the Labyrinth

Organization

Department: English & Philosophy

University: Idaho State University College: Arts & Letters Department: English & Philosophy 27

Document Attachments

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Paper	0	0	0

Specimen Elements

City

Pocatello

Coverage

Unknown to Unknown

Creator

Paul Williams

Publisher

Idaho State University

Type

Thesis

Is Complete

No

Date Published

9/6/2018

Archive

digital

City: Pocatello

Degree

Master

Document Attachments

Abstracts

My thesis examines how Patricia McKillip, Robert Holdstock, and John Crowley exemplify what I term the labyrinth-polder story; each creates a distinct fantastical labyrinth sequestered from the larger world that combine trials of time, space, memory, and imagination to enact transformation upon the characters. Fantasy studies is a relatively young field and much work remains to explore the genre’s various narrative types. Mikhail Bakhtin provides a useful tool for defining new narrative subcategories with his theory of the chronotope, which invokes both time and space to influence and fashion both theme and form within a story. Chronotopes account for the way recognizable genre fragments (characters, timing, etc.) intermix in a specific time and space. My study catalogues and evaluates narrative echoes across my chosen texts to define the chronotope of fantasy labyrinths, which uses a limited space to portray vast stories about identity and personal transformation. Key Words: fantasy, labyrinth, polder, chronotope, Bakhtin, McKillip, Kingfisher, Holdstock, Mythago Wood, Lavondyss, Crowley, Little, Big.