The dialogic imagination: four essays (Google eBook)

M. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin

University of Texas Press, 1981 - Philosophy - 444 pages

These essays reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)—known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevsky—as a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the novel. The Dialogic Imagination presents, in superb English translation, four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction to Bakhtin and his thought and a glossary of terminology.

Bakhtin uses the category "novel" in a highly idiosyncratic way, claiming for it vastly larger territory than has been traditionally accepted. For him, the novel is not so much a genre as it is a force, "novelness," which he discusses in "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse." Two essays, "Epic and Novel" and "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," deal with literary history in Bakhtin's own unorthodox way. In the final essay, he discusses literature and language in general, which he sees as stratified, constantly changing systems of subgenres, dialects, and fragmented "languages" in battle with one another.

What people are saying

Review: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays

User Review  - Craig Smillie - Goodreads

Bakhtin & Carnival One of the most enjoyable things I've read in the last few years is Mikhail Bakhtin writing about Carnival... and since Lent starts this week, the festival of Carne-vale - the ...

Review: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays

User Review  - Hevel Cava - Goodreads

Excellent, epic, lyrical...!

Contents

• Epic and Novel: 3
• From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse: 41
• Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: 84
• Discourse in the Novel: 259
• Glossary: 423
• Index: 435

About the author

Mikhail Bakhtin was born on November 17, 1895 in Orel, Russia. He attended the University of Petrograd from 1913 to 1918, where he studied classics and philology. After graduation, he taught, wrote, and developed many of his theories. From 1945 to 1961, Bakhtin taught at the Mordovia Teachers Training College. He continued to publish works and develop theories such as that of dialogics, which contends that language evolves dynamically and both shapes and is shaped by culture. The theories are explored in Art and Answerability and The Dialogic Imagination. Bakhtin wrote several of his early works under the pseudonyms of his friends P.N. Medvedev and V.N. Voloshinov. He was persecuted under the Stalin regime for his philosophies and sentenced to six years imprisonment. A bone disease that ultimately forced the amputation of his right leg in 1938 further complicated his troubles. Bakhtin died on March 7, 1975.

Michael Holquist is a professor of comparative literature and Slavic studies at Yale University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The dialogic imagination: four essays; Press Slavic series, University of Texas; Issue 1 of Slavic Series; Volume 1 of University of Texas Press Slavic series, Tex University of Texas Press Austin
• Author: M. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin
• Editor: J. Michael Holquist
• Translated by: J. Michael Holquist
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: University of Texas Press, 1981
• ISBN: 0292782861, 9780292782860
• Length: 444 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory; Philosophy / General