Page 184 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes Bakhtin was sentenced to exile in Siberia but appealed on the grounds that, in his weakened state,
it would kill him. Instead, he was sentenced to six years of internal exile in Kazakhstan.
Bakhtin spent these six years working as a book-keeper in the town of Kustanai, during which
time he wrote several important essays, including "Discourse in the Novel". In 1936 he taught
courses at the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute in Saransk. An obscure figure in a provincial
college, he dropped out of view and taught only occasionally. In 1937, Bakhtin moved to Kimry,
a town located a couple of hundred kilometers from Moscow. Here, Bakhtin completed work on
a book concerning the 18th-century German novel which was subsequently accepted by the Sovetskii
Pisatel' Publishing House. However, the only copy of the manuscript disappeared during the
upheaval caused by the German invasion.
After the amputation of his leg in 1938, Bakhtin's health improved and he became more prolific. In
1946 and 1949, the defense of this dissertation divided the scholars of Moscow into two groups:
those official opponents guiding the defense, who accepted the original and unorthodox manuscript,
and those other professors who were against the manuscript's acceptance. The book's earthy, anarchic
topic was the cause of many arguments that ceased only when the government intervened. Ultimately,
Bakhtin was denied a doctorate and granted a lesser degree by the State Accrediting Bureau. Later,
Bakhtin was invited back to Saransk, where he took on the position of chair of the General Literature
Department at the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute. When, in 1957, the Institute changed from a
teachers' college to a university, Bakhtin became head of the Department of Russian and World
Literature. In 1961, Bakhtin's deteriorating health forced him to retire, and in 1969, in search of
medical attention, Bakhtin moved back to Moscow, where he lived until his death in 1975.
Bakhtin's works and ideas gained popularity after his death, and he endured difficult conditions
for much of his professional life, a time in which information was often seen as dangerous and
therefore often hidden. As a result, the details provided now are often of uncertain accuracy. Also
contributing to the imprecision of these details is the limited access to Russian archival information
during Bakhtin's life. It is only after the archives became public that scholars realized that much of
what they thought they knew about the details of Bakhtin's life was false or skewed largely by
Bakhtin himself.

In 1940, and until the end of World War II, Bakhtin lived in Moscow, where he
submitted a dissertation on François Rabelais to the Gorky Institute of World
Literature to obtain a postgraduate title, a dissertation that could not be defended
until the war ended.

16.3 Works and Ideas

Toward a Philosophy of the Act
Toward a Philosophy of the Act was first published in the USSR in 1986 with the title K filosofii
postupka. The manuscript, written between 1919-1921, was found in bad condition with pages
missing and sections of text that were illegible. Consequently, this philosophical essay appears
today as a fragment of an unfinished work. Toward a Philosophy of the Act comprises only an
introduction, of which the first few pages are missing, and part one of the full text. However,
Bakhtin's intentions for the work were not altogether lost, for he provided an outline in the
introduction in which he stated that the essay was to contain four parts. The first part of the essay
deals with the analysis of the performed acts or deeds that comprise the actual world; "the world
actually experienced, and not the merely thinkable world." For the three subsequent and unfinished
parts of Toward a Philosophy of the Act Bakhtin states the topics he intends to discuss. He
outlines that the second part will deal with aesthetic activity and the ethics of artistic creation; the
third with the ethics of politics; and the fourth with religion.

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