From my early beginnings as a young introvert, the public library has always been a bit of a refuge. Years later, not much has changed, albeit with an additional affinity for endless hours spent scouring second-hand bookstores to add to my ever-growing “to-read” pile.
From one bookworm to another, this column will be underscoring and outlining various literary genres, authors, and recent reads and can serve as an introduction for those unfamiliar with these works, as a refresher for long-time aficionados, and maybe as an inspiration for readers to share their own suggested topics. Do you have a topic that you would like covered in this column? Feel free to contact me for an interview and a feature in an upcoming column.
Who
This week, we continue with the topic of literary criticism with a follow up to Russian Formalism. Although informally associated with the movement, Mikhail Bakhtin was not technically considered a Formalist. Instead, “Bakhtin operates somewhere between a [S]tructural and [C]onstructivist approach to discourse.”
As a reminder, Russian Formalism was “an innovative 20th-century Russian school of literary criticism.” In addition, Structuralism, “structuralism challenged the belief that a work of literature reflected a given reality; instead, a text was constituted of linguistic conventions and situated among other texts.”
Born on November 17,1895, in Orel, Imperial Russia and died on March 7, 1975, in Moscow, in the former USSR, Mikhail Bakhtin was a “Russian literary theorist and philosopher of language whose wide-ranging ideas significantly influenced Western thinking in cultural history, linguistics, literary theory, and aesthetics.”
One of Bakhtin’s famous concepts was polyphony, which “literally means multiple voices.” In particular, “[the author does not place his own narrative voice between the character and the reader … as if the books were written by multiple characters, not a single author’s standpoint.”
What
Examples of notable works by Mikhail Bakhtin include Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and The Dialogic Imagination.
Examples of polyphonic novels include The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Where
These texts were written in Imperial Russia, as well as the former USSR
When
These works take place throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Why
These works may be of interest to AU students who would like to understand the history of global literary criticism, as well as obtain a deeper understanding of the concept of polyphony.
How
AU’s wide range of diverse courses make it easy to study this topic in depth. Courses related to Mikhail Bakhtin are available in a variety of disciplines, including one’s that may fit into your Degree Works. (Always check with an AU counsellor to see if these particular courses fulfill your personal graduation requirements!)
AU students interested in learning more about this topic may enroll in ENGL 316: Approaches to Literary Theory and Criticism, a senior-level, three-credit course, which “is an introductory level course designed to familiarize you with a variety of critical perspectives and help you understand literary works more profoundly by integrating literary theory in your response to these works,” as well as ENGL 423: Advanced Literary Theory, a senior-level, three-credit course, which “investigates the theory and practice of communication, and more specifically, how people understand and use language and literature to make meaning. (Please note that both courses require ENGL 211: Prose Forms and ENGL 212: Poetry and Plays as prerequisites).
Students may also be interested in HIST 327: Imperial Russia, “a senior-level, three-credit course, which “examines the process of empire building in Russia and that looks at the means that tsars and tsarinas used to govern and control the large multicultural territory that expanded from Europe to Asia from the early to the late imperial era (1689–1917).” (No prerequisites are required for this course). Happy reading!
