Chaucer's dream-vision poems and the theory of spatial form

Chaucer's dream-vision poems and the theory of spatial form* 1 The re-publication in 1991 of Joseph Frank's original (1945) article on spatial form, together with some other essays of his on the subject1 has provided a timely reminder of the continuing relevance of his theory. Frank's theory was hailed by its admirers as thefirstpoetics of the modernist novel, and it has proved very useful in describing those features of modernfictionwhich had atfirstseemed difficulttoassimilate to traditional theories of narrative form: the self-reflexivity of much m o d e m writing, the lack of forward momentum in plot, the fragmentation of the narrative, and the ambiguity of its meaning. Fundamental to Frank's theory is a distinction between texts whose meaning is established through linearity and cause and effect relationships, which are aspects of a chronological, temporal process, and those whose meaning is (reconstituted through simultaneity and analogous relationships, which are aspects of a nonchronological spatial process. This is not meant to suggest a simple dichotomy of space and time whichtotallyeliminates one in consideration of the other, it is a question of emphasis, not elimination, and the theory acknowledges the chronicity in some form of all texts. More specifically, in the spatial text, time is subverted in some manner. Frank's article was, however, criticized for a variety of reasons, many of them to do with confusion over his use of the very terms 'time' and 'spatial'. Just as he never denied the presence of time in narrative, so he defined spatial as referring not to the actual physical space of thetext'ssettings or scenes but to events that negate temporal relationships even as they happen in time. With the term 'spatial' Frank centres on the creation offrozen moments in the course of the text juxtaposed by the writer, which must eventually, be reconnected by the reader in the process of comprehending the unified whole of the text. I prefer to think of these moments as shadows that cross and re-cross the text and linger within the mind of the reader. While these shadows do not deny time, their real function is to highlight in the narrative points of significance within the work. They are not static and devoid of time, but they are static in time, moving circularly as linear progression is halted. They are shadows because they are not actually the idea itself, but the hints of an idea that recur throughout the text, * Marcella Ryan, sadly, died before completing her PhD thesis on this topic. This article has been edited by her supervisor, Peter Goodall, from a number of drafts she had written. Ed. 1 The Idea of Spatial Form, N e w Brunswick, NJ, and London, 1991. The original article, 'Spatial Form in Modern Literature', was first published in Sewanee Review 53 (1945), 221-40, 433-56, 643-53. P A R E R G O N ns 11.1, June 1993 80 M. Ryan appearing in a vaguely familiar form which offers no temporal explanation for its apparent significance. Through these shadows, the spatial text mimics the process of memory, which, when sparked by a present stimulus, leaps the gaps in time to a moment from the past. This type of mental juxtaposition forms the basis of the spatialtext'sunity. In a spatial text the reading process and the reader's experience are emphasized and a spatial approach is, in many ways, a theory of perception. Within a spatial text it is the reader w h o must perceive and unite the elements of narrative. The spatial text plays with time in more ways than in the mere disruption of chronology within the text The temporal element or thetext'sconcept of time in general, is not 'diachronic and . . . historical [but] synchronic and "mythic".'2 'Mythic' here should be understood in the sense of the opposite of 'historical'; it is 'sacred repetition', that which is 'permanent and everrecurrent '.3 Emphasis shifts from specific historical time to 'eternal prototypes'4 that have significance beyond a particular historical moment. Edward Engleberg describes this shift in the time/space perspective as reconceiving the idea of history from 'history as time' to 'history as event...