Deep Chronotopic Map

The deep chronotope map immediately registers that Oliver Twist is chronotopically varied, containing all but one of the possible chronotopes. This is consistent with Bakhtin’s claim that the novel is a more open form than others, depicting a new ‘spatial sphere’ of existence. As well as the spatiality of realism,Twist incorporates other previous forms: the novel of manners, the Newgate/Gothic novel, the picaresque. And, in fact, though the novel can be spatially understood as constructed along the city vs country divide – the plot moves between London and Chertsey – the prototypical town and country chronotopes (public square, provincial town vs idyll and wilderness) are infrequent, and wilderness doesn’t appear at all. So, the country of the novel is the lived-in country of the cottage and field rather than remote, uninhabited environments. Parlour and encounter speak for the dominance of dialogue, castle and threshold of subjectivity/focalisation. Chronotopes such as metanarrative and distortion indicate the other spatial levels or dimensions in the text. These chronotopes, corporeal, psychological, narratorial, are physically connected (purple lines) and jumped between (orange). Taken together, the metanarrative chronotope and the connecting orange edges, make the novel’s level of narrative control explicit.