GOALS

The Forms of the Threshold Chronotope (FTC) will tackle the field of speculative fiction in six case studies to illustrate and iron out an equal number of recurrent problems which often bedevil the theorisation of liminality in literary research:

1. lack of a properly comparative and interdisciplinary scope;
2. a narrow understanding of Bakhtin’s notion of the threshold chronotope and of its relevance to Turner’s concept of liminality;
3. the positing of strict generic classifications;
4. recourse to normative instantiation (raising the instance to the status of norm);
5. scarcity of corpus-based models;
6. a-historical approaches.

The project will subsequently analyse the structure and dynamics of the various chronotopes of the threshold resulting from these case studies, and distil from them a set of shared features in polythetic distribution; it will revise the concept of threshold chronotope on the basis of our results; and provide a reasoned explanation for the claim that the threshold chronotope is the cornerstone of speculative fiction.
Faced with the danger that we might end up seeing threshold chronotopes everywhere and creating a new category that engulfs the universe, it is vital to stress that what is attempted here is simply to bring together the two concepts into a critical tool that will be serviceable in analysing a set of texts and genres that seem to share a ‘speculative’ bent.
This project cannot lose itself in universalistic statements. We will work within the Anglo-Saxon tradition, mindful though we are of the intermeshing of European cultures since ancient times, and aware that meaningful bridges can be laid between western and non-western traditions. The task of modifying the tool in order to accommodate materials from further afield belongs beyond the scope of this specific project.

The project aims to provide an analytical tool of use in the study of narrative. It has bearing not only on literary and textual matters but equally on issues in anthropology (e.g., it will provide a healthy corrective to the telicity of the rite-of-passage model), border studies, or geopolitical issues (tourism, war, migration, colonial and post-colonial developments take place on or across borders, or generate borders, and would benefit from a liminalist and chronotopic perspective).