Chronotopes of “Places” and “Non-places”: Ecopoetics of Amitav Ghosh’s <i>The Hungry Tide<i/>

Abstract

The Hungry Tide (2004) is a unique combination of fiction and cultural-anthropological research. The tidal land or bhatir desh is the destination for two travellers in the novel, Piyali Roy and Kanai Dutt, with one aim: to research into the mysteries of the Sunderbans. While Piya intends to study Irrawaddy dolphins, Kanai through the journal of his uncle Nirmal researches into the shifting ghettos of a group of refugees. In this paper we attempt to explore the idea of “ecopoetics†through an analysis of The Hungry Tide with the concept of chronotopes and chronotopic motifs proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin in “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novelâ€. We try to understand the novel in terms of the “folkloric†and “idyllic†chronotopes, and also examine “places†and “non-places†as related to each other, especially the chronotope of “non-places†as deeply related to the terrains of the mind.