Page 195 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 17: Mikhail Bakhtin and his “From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse”-Dialogics in Novels: Detailed Study

polyglossia. The most ancient forms for representing language were organized by laughter - these Notes
were originally nothing more than the ridiculing of another's language and another's direct
discourse. Polyglossia and the inter animation of languages associated with it elevated these
forms to a new artistic and ideological level, which made possible the genre of the novel. These
two factors in the prehistory of novelistic discourse are the subject of the present article.
II
One of the most ancient and widespread forms for representing the direct word of another is
parody. What is distinctive about parody as a form? Take, for example, the parodic sonnets with
which Don Quixote begins. Although they are impeccably structured as sonnets, we could never
possibly assign them to the sonnet genre. In Don Quixote they appear as part of a novel - but even
the isolated parodic sonnet (outside the novel) could not be classified generically as a sonnet. In
aparodied sonnet, the sonnet form is not a genre at all; that is, it is not the form of a whole but is
rather the object of representation: the sonnet here is the hero of the parody. In a parody on the
sonnet, we must first of all recognize a sonnet, recognize its form, its specific style, its manner of
seeing, its manner of selecting from and evaluating the world - the world view of the sonnet, as it
were. A parody may represent and ridicule these distinctive features of the sonnet well or badly,
profoundly or superficially. But in any case, what results is not a sonnet, but rather the image of
a sonnet.
For the same reasons one could not under any circumstances assign to the genres of 'epic poem'
the parodic epic 'War between the Mice and the Frogs' This is an image of the Homeric style. It is
precisely style that is the true hero of the work. We would have to say the same of Scarron's Virgil
travesti. One could likewise not include the fifteenth-century sermons joyeux, in the genre of the
sermon, or parodic' Pater nosters' or 'Ave Marias' in the genre of the prayer and so forth. All these
parodies on genres and generic styles ('languages') enter the great and diverse world of verbal
forms that ridicule the straightforward, serious word in all its generic guises. This world is very
rich, considerably richer than we are accustomed to believe. The nature and methods available for
ridiculing something are highly varied, and not exhausted by parodying and travestying in a
strict sense. These methods for making fun of the straightforward word have as yet received little
scholarly attention. Our general conceptions of parody and travesty in literature were formed as
ascholarly discipline solely by studying very late forms of literary parody, forms of the type
represented by Scarron's Enéide travestie, or Platen's 'Verhängnisvolle Gabel' that is, the
impoverished and limited conceptions of the nature of the parodying and travestying word were
then retroactively applied to the supremely rich and varied world of parody and travesty in
previous ages. The importance of parodic-travestying forms in world literature is enormous. Several
examples follow that bear witness to their wealth and special significance. Let us first take up the
ancient period. The 'literature of erudition' of late antiquity -Aulus Gellius, Plutarch (in his Moralia),
Macrobius and, in particular, Athenaeus- provide sufficiently rich data for judging the scope and
special character of the parodying and travestying literature of ancient times. The commentaries,
citations, references and allusions made by these 'erudites' add substantially to the fragmented
and random material on the ancient world's literature of laughter that has survived. The works of
such literary scholars as Dietrich, Reich, Cornford and others have prepared us for more correct
assessment of the role and significance of parodic-travestying forms in the verbal culture of ancient
times. It is our conviction that there never was a single strictly straightforward genre, no single
type of direct discourse - artistic, rhetorical, philosophical, religious, ordinary everyday - that did
not have its own parodying and travestying double, its own comic-ironic contre-partie. What is
more, these parodic doubles and laughing reflections of the direct word were, in some cases, just
as sanctioned by tradition andjust as canonized as their elevated models. I will deal only very
briefly with the problem of the so-called 'fourth drama', that is, the satyr play. In most instances
this drama, which follows upon the tragic trilogy, developed the same narrative and mythological
motifs as had the trilogy that preceded it. It was, therefore, a peculiar type of parodic-travestying
contre-partie to the myt that had just received a tragic treatment on the stage; it showed the myth
in a different aspect. These parodic-travestying counter-presentations of lofty national myths were
just assanctioned and canonical as their straight forward tragic manifestations. All the tragedians-

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 189