Page 189 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 16: Mikhail Bakhtin and his ‘From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse-Dialogics in Novels: Introduction

Self-Assessment Notes
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) Bakhtin began to be discovered by scholars in ............... .
(a) 1963 (b) 1965
(c) 1980 (d) 1971
(ii) Bakhtin completed his studies in ............... .
(a) 1915 (b) 1910
(c) 1918 (d) None of these
(iii) Bhaktin’s K. Filosofii Postupka was published in ............... .
(a) 1985 (b) 1986
(c) 1990 (d) 2000
(iv) The Dialogic Imagination was published in ............... .
(a) 1975 (b) 1965
(c) 1970 (d) 1985

16.5 Summary

• Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the
Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was
rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.
• Bakhtin had a difficult life and career, and few of his works were published in an authoritative
form during his lifetime. As a result, there is substantial disagreement over matters that are
normally taken for granted: in which discipline he worked (was he a philosopher or literary
critic?), how to periodize his work, and even which texts he wrote (see below). He is known
for a series of concepts that have been used and adapted in a number of disciplines: dialogism,
the carnivalesque, the chronotope, heteroglossia and "outsidedness" (the English translation
of a Russian term vnenakhodimost, sometimes rendered into English-from French rather
than from Russian-as "exotopy").
• Bakhtin's primary works include Toward a Philosophy of the Act, an unfinished portion of
a philosophical essay; Problems of Dostoyevsky's Art, to which Bakhtin later added a chapter
on the concept of carnival and published with the title Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics;
Rabelais and His World, which explores the openness of the Rabelaisian novel; The Dialogic
Imagination, whereby the four essays that comprise the work introduce the concepts of
dialogism, heteroglossia, and chronotope; and Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, a
collection of essays in which Bakhtin concerns himself with method and culture.
• Bakhtin completed his studies in 1918 and moved to a small city in western Russia, Nevel
(Pskov Oblast), where he worked as a school teacher for two years. It was at this time that the
first "Bakhtin Circle" formed. The group consisted of intellectuals with varying interests, but
all shared a love for the discussion of literary, religious, and political topics. Included in this
group were Valentin Voloshinov and, eventually, P. N. Medvedev, who joined the group
later in Vitebsk. German philosophy was the topic talked about most frequently and, from
this point forward, Bakhtin considered himself more a philosopher than a literary scholar. It
was in Nevel, also, that Bakhtin worked tirelessly on a large work concerning moral
philosophy that was never published in its entirety.
• In 1924, Bakhtin moved to Leningrad, where he assumed a position at the Historical Institute
and provided consulting services for the State Publishing House. It is at this time that Bakhtin
decided to share his work with the public, but just before "On the Question of the Methodology
of Aesthetics in Written Works" was to be published, the journal in which it was to appear
stopped publication. This work was eventually published 51 years later.

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