Bakhtin

Catalog description

This seminar is designed to study in depth an influential literary theory created by Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. In many respects, Bakhtin remains an enigmatic and contradictory figure. The authorship of many of his texts is still unclear. They were published under the names of several of his friends, written by Bakhtin not as his own texts but as texts by the others. These texts (three books and several articles) should probably be described as experiences in dialogism -- when an idea acquires autonomy and is associated more with a fictitious character than with the author himself. The seminar wil focus on the history of this key-concept - dialogism - and its meaning. We will study an immediate intellectual context of Bakhtin's work and explore how the idea of dialogism triggered a new understanding of carnival. A special attention will be paid to surprising relations between comedy and dialogism, dialogism and platonic tradition. We will read Bakhtin's famous books on Dostoevsky and on Rabelais and carnival, as well as his less known works. We will study Bakhtin against a fascinating background of intellectual trends that dominated European culture in the 1910-1930s (Nietzsche, neokantianism, phenomenology).