تصوراتِ زمان و مکاں اور ادب: انسلاک، اطلاق اور امکان

Concepts of Time and Space in Literature: Connection, Application and Possibility

Abstract

Abstract: Time and space are among the oldest questions of human thought, and literature has always been a place where they are both examined and made. This article studies the concepts of time and space and their relation to literature under three heads: connection, application and possibility. It first outlines the lexical, philosophical, scientific and religious dimensions of the two concepts, from Augustine, Newton and Kant to Bergson, Heidegger, Minkowski and Iqbal, together with the spatial theories of Tuan, Bachelard, Lefebvre and Foucault. It then shows how literature, a temporal art that also creates space, is bound to these concepts, drawing on Lessing, Joseph Frank, Ricoeur and Bakhtin's chronotope, and identifies five levels at which Urdu writers have used time and space, with examples from Mir Amman, Ghalib, Nazir Ahmad, Qurratulain Hyder, Intizar Husain, Shaukat Siddiqui and Mustansar Hussain Tarar. A five-level method of critical application is proposed: story time and narrating time, order and pace, the nature of time, layers of space, and the chronotope. The method is tested on Manto's "Toba Tek Singh" and Iqbal's "Masjid-e-Qurtuba". The article closes by indicating new directions for Urdu research in memory studies, historical fiction, ecocriticism, globalization and gendered space.