Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975)

Oh man, MM. MM Cool M. Martin muvs cool Mikhail. I have my first theory-crush, in 2008, when I should be beyond such things. What I am about to present to you are the notes I took during the reading of The Dialogic Imagination, something I never do, but this sweet man inspired it. Then I got tired, because he is, as the intro says, a "baggy monster," but there is even more in the second half of the book. There is an incredibly principled insistence on the recognition of the dialogic nature show more of the novel and the heteroglossia of language, and somehow you like him even MORE for not making it political, because he gave Bhabha and others the tools to do so. There is Rabelais Rabelais Rabelais. there is a treasure trove, just like how he uses that term to describe language itself, and whenever you disagree or don't understand you want to argie, because he is open to that - the book really does scream "written in exile in Siberia in a warm house and talking over what you write with your fellow dissident intellectuals every night (the dialogization of theory!) - or to keep reading, because he is patient and will say it again.

Notes:
-aaaah!
-not just a literary theorist - a philosopher for people whose lives are all wrapped up in books
-all non-novelistic genres, and take the epic as representative in its extremity, are finished, characterized by an absolute past where all characters' view of the world coincides, and coincides with the audience's. The novel is social, and about the present and the future. Novelization - a process, not really a genre - comes when a character slips his bounds - when there is a human surplus - THAT's what self-and world-naturalization will always miss - OMG!
-Socrates, maybe, the first novelistic hero.
-because a novelistic hero is possible: 1) carnivalize the epic hero. make him accessible to the people. Hercules and the Lindwurm. 2) folk heroes - no ritual, ossified recitation of deeds, but invention!
-Punch, Harlequin, Guy Fawkes, hell, the rogue, the clown, the fool. - practical, eternal, personable, indestructible - ever reborn
-Riddley Walker - I'm starting to see why people find Tolkien so hateful. Michael Moorcock, all is forgiven!
-the novel is the genre of becoming
-novel is comin out of songs and ad hoc stories and proto-rpgs, even, hell! - opern stories, separate from the epic song tradition - and prolly just shooting the shit
-and when we encounter the other for real - his language, not just his sword - the world is novelized. Greeks and Persians. The Renaissance. No more first best Achilles
-the epic hero is valourized by being perfect form. the novelistic hero is valorized by containng something heroic amid all the realness. We tell stories about Socrates and Xanthippe, and that carnivalizes him. He is crochety and wise. Odysseus is just brave and smart.
-L. Bloom is a carnivalized Odysseus!
-laughter is the basis of the novel - it is cynicism, forgetting, independence, joy
no more ritual, no more passivity in the face of unchange - we are the ones we've been waiting for! vs. McCain's epic America, ha ha
-laughter and dialogue make science and free thought possible - the core of the novel is dialogue
-I never really got the irony in Boethius' epic-time angels vs. doomed dude laughing - so we need the epic as a starting point, to be left behind. is that what Boe. was doing with religion?
we can enter the novel, unlike any other genre - that is its danger - Bovaryism, and Don Q. novels are not a substitute for life. No Rip van W. - put on a mask! Be Punch! Be a symbol, a dialogic pole, not a narrative!
-epic is open in content because closed in form.as the open genre, novels, oddly, NEED a story. The Iliad could not be a novel. The dudes would not have done the things they did
-the novel is deepening our discernment and understanding of the new demands of our age
-OH N MORE: hetero- and polyglossia; centrifugality and -petality; the amazing chronotope and adventure time like in comix yo; novel of everyday life as metamorphosis; public biography justifying self to world culminating in novel; parallel tradition justifying self to self begins with Augustine; oh what a lonely time the pre-dialogic era was for man; chivalric romance as precursor to magic realism - world of everyday magic and hero at home anywhere anywhen - foreign to novel of antiquity, when world was the monoglot home and alien foreign (representing the dialogic but sticking to one pole); poetry as ambiguous monolalia, prose as built of multiple coherent poles - and thus ambiguous too but anchored to real; Dante gets his power from being time man in angel world, where time and space are plastic (cf. Boethius); more, more, more, more, more. show less

My recent (over the last couple of years) reading of Medieval literature and renaissance literature has taught me that to appreciate their works it is essential to approach the authors on their own terms as far as possible. This of course means that there is some reading to be done to enable one to understand something of the life and times in which the authors lived. It is also beneficial to have an understanding of etymology and of the writings and thoughts that influenced men (and some show more women) of letters. Approaching texts solely from a 21st century standpoint will give a different reading experience and in my view one that tells only a part of the story. Bakhtin's book on Rabelais starts from the premise that Rabelais has been seriously misunderstood by 20th century critics because they failed to engage with important aspects of life in the 16th century which shaped Rabelais magnum opus Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Rabelais and his world was Mikhail Bakhtins first book to be published in English when it appeared in 1968, it had enjoyed a stormy reception when it was first published in Russia some years earlier, but now it is considered a classic on the subject of the renaissance.

Bakhtin provided a summary of many of the essential points of his book in a sort of closing statement where he says:

"The main failure of contemporary West-European Rabelaisiana consists in the fact that it ignores folk culture and tries to fit Francois Rabelais novel into a framework of official culture, to conceive it as following the stream of "great" French literature. Because of this misinterpretation Rabelais scholars are unable to master that which is most essential in the novel..........Rabelais inherited and brought to fulfilment thousands of years of folk humour. His work is the unique key for the understanding of this culture in its most powerful, deep, and original manifestation...........While analysing past ages we are too often obliged "to take each epoch at it's word", that is to believe it's official ideologists. We do not hear the voice of the people and cannot find and decipher it's pure unmixed expression."

Just what it is that those 20th century critics missed is the subject of Bakhtin's book. Firstly they failed to take into account the importance of the culture of the carnival and the market place which were essential qualities of late medieval and Renaissance life. This culture of the carnival was based on laughter and laughter to some extent alleviated the fear of day to day existence and certainly the fear of God that was an essential part of religious life. This second life outside of the world of officialdom was used extensively in Gargantua and Pantegruel by Rabelais and failure to understand this culture which Bakhtin calls folk culture makes it impossible to understand 16th century literature and Rabelais in particular. Bakhtin says that by using grotesque realism Rabelais was able to present a contradictory and double faced portrait of renaissance life, a life that consisted both of official and folk culture and Bakhtin backs up his thesis with plenty of examples from both Gargantua and Pantegruel. Another essential element of Rabelais ideas is his use of grotesque realism, which includes exaggerated images of bodily functions and is not just a list of vulgarities but goes further; laying stress on their regenerative powers. The outlook for mankind is optimistic despite all the filth and crap that surrounds us, because it is precisely from this that we are reborn. Secondly critics have failed to take into account Rabelais' use of words and the changing face of the language in the sixteenth century. Rabelais wrote Gargantua and Pantegruel in the vernacular (earlier it they would have been written in Latin) but it was at a time when the vernacular was undergoing substantial change. Bakhtin points out that Rabelais use of language was unique especially his usage of words gathered from the market place, that would never have been written down before. From Bakhtins perspective Rabelais was a unique chronicler of his life and times and for this reason alone he is an important force in world literature.

The whole story of Rabelais and his importance is probably not told in Bakhtin's book, however it would seem to me that an essential part of that story is here and it is a part that has not been understood properly previously. It is a book of ideas and as such is worth reading by anybody interested in Rabelais and certainly anybody interested in the renaissance. I have still to read Gargantua and Pantegruel and at over a 1000 pages in the penguin classics edition they are not tomes that I would want to re-read anytime soon and so having Bakhtin's thoughts in my head, will I am sure enhance my reading experience. [Rabelais and his world] has been translated by Helene Iswolsky, which is very readable, the book itself can be a little repetitive but when dealing with such original ideas on a subject, it is good to have those thoughts re-stated in ways that add to our understanding and I found that Bakhtin achieves this with his summaries that appear throughout the book. An impressive work that goes beyond literary criticism and takes the reader into the realms of reinterpreting a period of history that is original and thought provoking. A 4.5 star read. show less

Starts off increasingly edifying and amusing, putting things in order, providing a wealth of references to medieval literature, elucidating, moving, opening one's eyes on Rabelais' humor and so on.

After about a third the style started to get on my nerves, and the suspicion that at least some of the sophistry is due to obligatory Marxist ideals and communistic dialectics (Hegelianism?) gets stronger and more aggressive (and I say that as someone who never read either Marx or Hegel, so no show more guarantee that that was the problem).

While reading the last part I was almost completely numb. No fun with Gogol. show less

This is Bakhtin at his best. His deep examination of the carnivalesque and the grotesque in Rabelais's work sheds great light on contemporary works of the bodily, for example Gravity's Rainbow. Not for the faint of heart, or the slight of mind, this is critical theory at its most critical.