This volume is a critical introduction to the life and works of Mikhail Bakhtin and his theoretical oeuvre. It outlines his major ideas such as dialogism, the dialogic imagination, heteroglossia, polyphony, carnival, chronotope and answerability, and their continued relevance in contemporary studies in literature and culture studies, and folk and popular cultures. Mikhail Bakhtin analyses the theorist’s major contributions to literary criticism and the study of the novelistic genre, and examines Bakhtin’s legacy for the humanities as a whole. The volume is a nuanced study of the ethical perspective in Bakhtin’s work that locates literature at the intersection of various disciplines such as philosophy, sociology and political science.

E. V. Ramakrishnan, formerly Professor Emeritus at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies in Central University of Gujarat, is a bilingual critic, poet and translator. He has published several volumes of criticism in Malayalam and English, and poetry in English. His well-known publications include Making It New: Modernism in Malayalam, Marathi and Hindi Poetry, The Tree of Tongues: An Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry, Locating Indian Literature: Texts, Traditions, Translations (Orient BlackSwan), Indigenous Imaginaries: Literature, Region, Modernity (Orient BlackSwan), and the co-edited Bakhtinian Explorations of Indian Culture: Pluralism, Dogma and Dialogue through History.

Preface

1. Mikhail Bakhtin: An Introduction
2. Mikhail Bakhtin: Contexts and Concepts
3. From Answerability to Unfinalisability: Bakhtin’s Philosophical Ideas on the Artistic Process
4. Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Novel: Concepts and Categories
5. Carnival and Its Ethos: Implications for Literature and Culture
6. A Theory of the Novel: Dialogic Imagination, Heteroglossia, Chronotope and Discourse in the Novel
7. Bakhtin and Beyond: Implications of Bakhtin’s Theories and Concepts for Humanities and Literary Theory

Glossary of Select Terms
Suggested Reading