Dialogic theory, literary theory, cultural studies

Mikhail M. Bakhtin — is increasingly being recognized as one of the major literary theorists of the twentieth century. While Bakhtin himself was not a member of the Communist Party, his work has been regarded by some as Marxist in orientation, seeking to provide a corrective to the abstractness of extreme formalism. Despite his critique of formalism, he has also been claimed as a member of the Jakobsonian formalist school, as a poststructuralist , and even as a religious thinker.

Mikhail bakhtin heteroglossia

The others, such as the influential Rabelais and his World , were not published until much later. After decades of obscurity, he witnessed in the s a renewed interest in his works and he became a cult figure in the Soviet Union. In the s his reputation extended to France and in the s to England and America. Born in the town of Orel in Russia, Bakhtin subsequently obtained a degree in classics and philology from the University of St.

Petersburg Petrograd in Petersburg at this time was the locus of heated literary-critical debate involving the symbolists, futurists, and Formalists.

Bakhtinian meaning

Bakhtin was influenced by figures such F. Zelinski, a classicist, and the Kantian thinker Vvedenski. It was here that the first Bakhtin Circle convened, including such figures as the musicologist and later linguist Valentin Volosinov, the philologist Lev Pumpianskij, and the philosopher Matvej Isaic Kagan. He married and returned with his wife to St.

Petersburg in