Narrative Worldmaking of Temporal and Spatial Intersections: "Here" and "Elsewhere" in Life Is Elsewhere
Abstract
Milan Kundera’s novel, Life Is Elsewhere, narrates the entire life of the protagonist from pre-birth to death. The author constructs a realistic world of “here” in contrast to a dreamlike world of “elsewhere” in the novel, setting up two homologous narrative worlds that finally drift into an irreconcilable separation and opposition. Cognitive narratology’s focus on narrative worldmaking provides the readers with a pathway to analyze the dual narrative worlds in the text, creating double-scope stories represented by the personae of Jaromil and Xavier. The discrepancy between the two worlds runs throughout the narrative, and the relationship between the two independent yet mirroring worlds is evident from the beginning of their worldmaking. The implied distinction between “here” and “elsewhere” in “Life Is Elsewhere” is a metaphor for the unity of opposites in these two story worlds. The storyteller guides the interpreter’s reading activity through narration.
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