期刊名称：European Journal of Social and Human Sciences
印刷版ISSN：1339-6773
出版年度：2015
卷号：5
期号：1
页码：10-18
语种：English
出版社：Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia
摘要：The paper is the attempt to present the analysis of the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens in terms of time and space relations, according to the theory of Mikhail Bakchtin. The author of the article distinguishes different types of chronotope that constitute the construction of the novel. This distinction is based on the oppositions: town versus circus, where town represents the materialistic unchangeable world and the circus stands for spiritual life and symbol of freedom. The town represents a typical nineteenth – century industrial area, where life concentrates only on work and the inhabitants move like machines in the same directions every day; the circus, on the other hand, is the embodiment of human freedom, where people move in different dimensions (up and down, left and right, forewards and backwards). The movement in both places has a metaphorical meaning: it refers either to the limitations imposed on humans (factories and school in the town) or to the pursuit for happiness (circus). By using such contrasts Dickens wanted to achieve the effect of realism in depicting Victorian world.
