Literally ‘time-place’, it denotes the intrinsic interconnection of these two dimensions, but also connotes an author’s specific attitude to the passing of time and the location of events in a narrative. The chronotope, according to its inventor Russian linguist and literary critic Bakhtin, Mikhail, is a formally constitutive category of literature, which means that it is a feature of every piece of literature. In other words, literature cannot not have a chronotopic dimension, but this dimension may vary quite considerably from example to example. Variations in the formation of chronotopes can be used to specify genre, Bakhtin suggests. His extensive historical account of the development of different types of chronotope in The Dialogic Imagination (1981) offers a vivid illustration of the importance of this concept. As he shows, in classical Greek narratives the hero often spends years away from home, having adventure after adventure, all without ever aging and when he returns home his youthful bride is still as youthful as she ever was. The departure from the constrictions of biological time is necessary for the type of tale being told and its peculiar effects clearly depend on this departure too. Chronotope should not be confused with duration or setting, which are surface features. See also