A Study Of Spatialized Time In Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio

Winesburg, Ohio, one of the most important works of Sherwood Anderson, established his reputation in literature. It portrays a group of "grotesque" characters who are lonely, frustrated, hopeless, self-destructive, and suffocative. This paper tries to analyze Winesburg, Ohio based on the spatialised time theory.The paper includes four chapters:The first chapter will give a brief introduction to the author Sherwood Anderson and his masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio, Brought up in the Middle West small town, he depicted a similar town as Clyde. His writing was greatly influenced by his environment of Middle West. In addition, it was a transitional point from agrarian society to industrial one, which makes all the difference to the Anderson’s writing purpose and the theme. Therefore, in this chapter, the period of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will be discussed, especially the impact on the Middle westerners at that time. The book is hailed as both a first-rate psychological document and a fable of American estrangement, so it is natural to discuss Anderson and his characters based on the theories of Psychology. However, this paper is analyzed on the basis of Bakhtin’s Theory of Chronotope, so it is necessary to introduce Chronotope Theory. Then it will be narrowed down to spatialized time theory, which will be the theoretical foundation of this paper. Spatialized time can be achieved by many techniques; however, juxtaposition, repetition and George’s grow in the chronotope are obvious and unique in Winesburg, Ohio. When the spatialized time theory is put into the research, it will be a strong evidence to sort out Winesburg, Ohio to which genre it belongs. Is it a novel or a collection of short stories?The second chapter discusses juxtaposition in Winesburg, Ohio systematically. First, it is the definition of juxtaposition, followed by the various juxtapositions in Winesburg, Ohio, such as the juxtaposition of multiple stories, the juxtaposition of some characters, and the juxtaposition of reality and imagination. Through juxtaposition, the narrative time is spatialized. The third chapter discusses repetition. It is a very useful method to the application of the theory of spatialized time. In this part, the repetition of characters, the image of hands, the repetition of setting of darkness and the repetition of mode will be analyzed. Using repetition, it is easy to be brought in to a frozen space, which is the effect of spatialized time.The fourth chapter draws attention to George’s development in the coordinate of time-space. This chapter can de divided into two parts:the grotesques’ moment of insight accelerate his growth and the development through his intuition in three ways. This part of analysis will be based on the threshold chronotope and novel chronotope.In the last chapter, a conclusion is given to the significance of the spatialized time theory in Winesburg, Ohio.