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. Affiliation: Atsuko Sakaki, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
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).
Introduction: The Train as Embodied Space-Time, with Case Studies of The Lady Vanishes, The Narrow Margin, and Night Train Traveling Alone on the Rails into the Future: Sanshirō, My Most Secret Council, Night Train to Lisbon, and Zone Juncture 1: Wendy and Lucy Best Friends for a While: Fugitives on the Train in “Night of the Milky Way Railway,” Night Passage, and The Naked Eye Juncture 2: Clouds of Sils Maria It’s Not “I,” It’s “You”: A Second-Person Protagonist on the Train in La Modification, Blue Journey, and Suspects on the Night Train Conclusion: Stations as an Extension of the Train Space-Time in the Romantic Narrative “North Station”
