Page 188 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes literature. These extraliterary genres have remained largely unexplored. Bakhtin makes the
distinction between primary genres and secondary genres, whereby primary genres legislate those
words, phrases, and expressions that are acceptable in everyday life, and secondary genres are
characterized by various types of text such as legal, scientific, etc.
"The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in
Philosophical Analysis" is a compilation of the thoughts Bakhtin recorded in his notebooks. These
notes focus mostly on the problems of the text, but various other sections of the paper discuss
topics he has taken up elsewhere, such as speech genres, the status of the author, and the distinct
nature of the human sciences. However, "The Problem of the Text" deals primarily with dialogue
and the way in which a text relates to its context. Speakers, Bakhtin claims, shape an utterance
according to three variables: the object of discourse, the immediate addressee, and a superaddressee.
This is what Bakhtin describes as the tertiary nature of dialogue.
"From Notes Made in 1970-71" appears also as a collection of fragments extracted from notebooks
Bakhtin kept during the years of 1970 and 1971. It is here that Bakhtin discusses interpretation and
its endless possibilities. According to Bakhtin, humans have a habit of making narrow
interpretations, but such limited interpretations only serve to weaken the richness of the past.
The final essay, "Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences", originates from notes Bakhtin
wrote during the mid-seventies and is the last piece of writing Bakhtin produced before he died.
In this essay he makes a distinction between dialectic and dialogics and comments on the difference
between the text and the aesthetic object. It is here also, that Bakhtin differentiates himself from
the Formalists, who, he felt, underestimated the importance of content while oversimplifying
change, and the Structuralists, who too rigidly adhered to the concept of "code."
Disputed Texts
Some of the works which bear the names of Bakhtin's close friends V. N. Vološinov and P. N.
Medvedev have been attributed to Bakhtin - particularly The Formal Method in Literary
Scholarshipand Marxism and Philosophy of Language. These claims originated in the early 1970s
and received their earliest full articulation in English in Clark and Holquist's 1984 biography of
Bakhtin. In the years since then, however, most scholars have come to agree that Vološinov and
Medvedev ought to be considered the true authors of these works. Although Bakhtin undoubtedly
influenced these scholars and may even have had a hand in composing the works attributed to
them, it now seems clear that if it was necessary to attribute authorship of these works to one
person, Vološinov and Medvedev respectively should receive credit.
Influence
He is known today for his interest in a wide variety of subjects, ideas, vocabularies, and periods,
as well as his use of authorial disguises, and for his influence (alongside György Lukács) on the
growth of Western scholarship on the novel as a premiere literary genre. As a result of the breadth
of topics with which he dealt, Bakhtin has influenced such Western schools of theory as Neo-
Marxism, Structuralism, and Semiotics. However, his influence on such groups has, somewhat
paradoxically, resulted in narrowing the scope of Bakhtin's work. According to Clark and Holquist,
rarely do those who incorporate Bakhtin's ideas into theories of their own appreciate his work in
its entirety.
While Bakhtin is traditionally seen as a literary critic, there can be no denying his impact on the
realm of rhetorical theory. Among his many theories and ideas Bakhtin indicates that style is a
developmental process, occurring both within the user of language and language itself. His work
instills in the reader an awareness of tone and expression that arises from the careful formation of
verbal phrasing. By means of his writing, Bakhtin has enriched the experience of verbal and
written expression which ultimately aids the formal teaching of writing. Some even suggest that
Bakhtin introduces a new meaning to rhetoric because of his tendency to reject the separation of
language and ideology.

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