The Dialogic Imagination
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Book Overview
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.
Customer Reviews
Rated 5 starsdialogic imagination review
this supplier made the process exceptionally easy. The book came in very good condition and on time. The book itself may be considered a difficult read due to the nature of Bakhtin's language, but, overall this text has been very helpful in relation to my lit classes.
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Rated 5 starsConversation vs. Generic Being
Bakhtin is quite a character, and much more accessible as a writer than the reviewer below might suggest in this volume. He has been regarded as the most important theorist of the novel, perhaps ever. But when he celebrates "the novel," it is not always obvious if he's discussing actual novels, an idea ubernovel, or a quality that is novel. I prefer the latter interpretation, but all three are possible. The crown jewel...
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Rated 5 starsBakhtin at his best
I was introduced the Bakhtin, by way of this book, in my grad literary theory course. I found him at the time to be a long-winded individual who took 200 pages to say what could have been said in 50. How wrong I was.I've since become very enamored of Bakhtin's ideas and I think now that this collection was a wonderful place to start. Yes, Bakhtin is demanding but once you step up to the challenge you will find yourself rewarded...
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Rated 5 starsBakhtin's most important and influential work on the novel
This book consists of four essays of Bakhtin's "Middle Period", two short and two longer works which have been arranged, according to complexity, with the most accessible essay first and the most difficult last. Cooincidentally, this is also the reverse order in which they were written. None of these essays were avaiable in English before the present translation/compilation by Emerson and Holquist, and judging from its many...
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Rated 5 starsdamnably brilliant
Bakhtin arguably at his best. Sure the final essay in the volume is not an easy read, but if you think Bakhtin is hard to read try Heidegger when he grooves along with his own lingo. Bakhtin's key idea of contextual language and the many voicedness of novels against the backdrop of an author's voice and that of his times is prehaps the sum total of what the novel as a genre is. In fact, the novel is not quite a genre but...
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