Psychological Space and Real Space in Yoko Ogawa’s Novel “The Professor And His Beloved Equation” － Focusing on symbols and temporality

This paper examines the psychological space of a character in Yoko Ogawa’s novel, “The Professor And His Beloved Equation”, which is 80 minutes in which temporal continuity is demonstrated, using Peirce’s semiotic system and dialectical framework. It examines the tension and relaxation of the narrative, and the interaction between the character’s inner self and reality, and explores the real space that is surfaced in an uncanny manner through punctum and the contraction of time. Up until now, research on Ogawa’s literature has focused on family narratives. On the other hand, there has been no attempt to analyze the psychological space and the real space within the unique framework of semiotics and temporality, and to treat the specific time concept of 80 minutes as a “literary temporality of contraction.” This paper is of great academic significance in that it deeply illuminates the complex spatial structure and symbolic system of Ogawa’s literature through an analysis that combines the semiotic system and temporality, and attempts to expand the methodological interpretation of literary works created based on mathematical pixels. The understanding of Peirce’s semiotic system and the concept of time contraction examined in this study is expected to broaden the scope of works created based on mathematical pixels and contribute to expanding the methodology for their analysis.