Train Travel as Embodied Space-Time in Narrative Theory

Train Travel as Embodied Space-Time in Narrative Theory argues that the train is a loaded trope for reconfiguring narrative theories past their “spatial turn.” Atsuko Sakaki’s method exploits intensive and rigorous close reading of literary and cinematic narratives on one hand, and on the other hand interdisciplinary perspectives that draw out larger connections to narrative theory. The book utilizes not only narratological frameworks but also concepts of space-focused humanity oriented social sciences, such as human geography, mobility studies, tourism studies, and qualitative/experience-based ethnography, in their post “narrative turn.” On this interface of narrative studies and spatial studies, this book pays concerted attention to the formation of affordances, or relations in which the human subject uses a space-time and things in it, in terms of passenger experience of the train carriage and its extension. Atsuko Sakaki is Professor of East Asian studies and Comparative Literature at University of Toronto, Canada. She is the author of many articles and three books, including Recontextualizing Texts: Narrative Performance in Modern Japanese Fiction (Harvard 1999) and The Rhetoric of Photography in Modern Japanese Literature (Brill 2015). ”Atsuko Sakaki keeps us on our toes with her consistent deconstructions of central conceptualizations and, drawing on a wealth of philosophical and theoretical texts, in language as clear as it is sensual, brings us to new insights into human modes of being and ontologies.” Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany “In this intricate study of the entanglement of trains and narratives, Sakaki transforms our understanding of both. Train Travel uncovers a radically different experience of trains and narratives: they do not merely travel from one place to another; they construct passage as such, an experience of mutual entrainment.” Thomas Lamarre, University of Chicago