Abbott’s Line Of Flight: Flatland – A Romance of Many Dimensions

This paper examines Abbott’s narrative Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions, which explores the paradigmatic transformation of Victorian England accelerated by spatiotemporal dissolution/the problem of the fourth dimension through a line-based approach. Following Abbott’s orientation toward the line, the study approaches the story through a Deleuzian philosophy that builds a comprehensive, line-based vocabulary of spatiotemporal dissolution triggered by modernization, and through axonometric drawing—a technique also used by avant-garde artists to engage with the problem of the fourth dimension. It aims to decipher the internal logic of spatial narrative through the axonometric structure, grounded in “temporal objectives,” “spatial objectives,” and “lines of flight,” conceived as a conceptual network/diagram that explains and stimulates the reader’s imagination. By examining how temporal and spatial dimensions form a tightly integrated network (striated) and how the conditions for drawing a line of flight from the organizational order emerge (smooth), this study aims to reveal the line’s capacity to trigger a relational understanding of imaginary external worlds. The simultaneous use of linear and verbal descriptions in constructing external worlds corresponding to different modes of understanding in a society on the threshold of modernity is read as an immediate correspondence between form and content, and Abbott’s work itself is argued to draw a line of flight. Drawing on the story’s line-based approach, this article situates itself within the existing literature by fostering a discussion at the intersection of representation, spatiality, and literature while exploring the correspondence between form and content.