Interdisciplinary by design and intent, this volume brings together nine essays by established and new scholars from Russia, Britain, and North America to explore the historical contexts and current relevance of the work of the Bakhtin Circle for social theory, philosophy, history, and linguistics. The articles demonstrate that exploring the background of Bakhtinian thought is a better way of appreciating their significance for the analysis of contemporary social and cultural phenomena.
Bakhtin is especially known for his work on the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Problemy tvorchestva Dostoyevskogo (1929; 2nd ed., 1963, retitled Problemy poetiki Dostoyevskogo; Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics), which he published under his own name just before he was arrested. It is considered one of the finest critical works on Dostoyevsky. In the book Bakhtin expressed his belief in a mutual relation between meaning and context involving the author, the work, and the reader, each constantly affecting and influencing the others, and the whole influenced by existing political and social forces. Bakhtin further developed this theory of polyphony, or “dialogics,” in Voprosy literatury i estetiki (1975; The Dialogic Imagination), in which he postulated that, rather than being static, language evolves dynamically and is affected by and affects the culture that produces and uses it. Bakhtin also wrote Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaya kultura srednevekovya i Renessansa (1965; Rabelais and His World).
Mikhail Bakhtin, and the writers associated with him, are of great importance to the traditions of literary theory and criticism. In particular, his concept of locating utterances in a "dialogical" situation has contributed immensely to theories of linguistics, language, and literature, and philosophy.
In Bakhtin Thought, Simon Dentith provides a lucid and approachable introduction to the work of Bahktin and his circle, taking the reader helpfully through the many areas of their thought. Dentith indicates the points of contention, difficulty, and importance. The book not only draws together together the often disparately collected writing of Bakhtin, but also that of Voloshinov and Medvedev, language theorists of commensurable importance as well.
In Dialogism, Michael Holquist provides the first comprehensive account of the Bakhtinian legacy, drawing on the entire corpus of Bakhtin's existing works, including previously unexamined Soviet archival material. While work from Bakhtin's different periods is highly varied, Holquist argues that there is a coherent shape to the achievement as a whole. Its key is Bakhtin's commitment to the concept of dialogue, the principle of constant interplay between a variety of dynamic voices and discourses in different levels of texts, nature, society and the self.
In this multi-disciplinary volume, comprising the work of several established scholars from different countries, central concepts associated with the work of the Bakhtin Circle are interrogated in relation to intellectual history, language theory and an understanding of new media. The book will prove an important resource for those interested in the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle, but also for those attempting to develop a coherent theoretical approach to language in use and problems of meaning production in new media.
