HANDOUT ON BAKHTIN, TOLSTOY, AND DOSTOEVSKY
Assignment for next time
Leo Tolstoy, "Three Deaths" (handout)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Part One, chapter four; and Part Three, chapter four. (handout)
M. M. Bakhtin, "Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Novel," from Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, in The Bakhtin Reader, ed. Pam Morris (London: Edward Arnold, 1994): 88-96.
M. M. Bakhtin, "Dialogic Idea as Novelistic Image," from Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, in Bakhtin Reader: 97-102.
M. M. Bakhtin, "The Heteroglot Novel," from "Discourse in the Novel, in Bakhtin Reader: 112-20.
Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Novel (1929): 88-96
Unlike most literary theorists, who are drawn to poetry or drama, Bakhtin was devoted to the novel. His favorite novelist was Fyodor Dostoevsky, whom he praised for appreciating the truly dialogic nature of language--and of the novel form in particular.
As you consider "Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Novel," an excerpt from the revised editionof his book on Dostoevsky, think about how Bakhtin characterizes the novelists who came before Dostoevsky. Focus on what Bakhtin has to say about Tolstoy, and try to figure out why Bakhtin rates Tolstoy beneath Dostoevsky. In particular, examine Tolstoy's narrator to see if the narrator is really as monologic as Bakhtin makes him out to be. Is the narrator really assured of his ability to have the "last word"? Does he appear more or less authoritative (and perhaps authoritarian) than Dostoevsky's narrator?
Dialogic Idea as Novelistic Image (1929): 97-102
In the course of "Dialogic Idea," Bakhtin mentions a pair of passages from Crime and Punishment. In the first passage, which appears in Part One, chapter four, the novel's central character, a poor student named Raskolnikov, responds to a letter that he's just received from his mother. From the letter Raskolnikov has learned that his sister is now engaged to marry a prosperous man named Luzhin. Raskolnikov suspects that his sister (her name is Dunia) is marrying Luzhin for his money--and he concludes that Dunia is actually "selling herself" to Luzhin so she can provide for the rest of her family.
In addition to this passage, Bakhtin considers a dialogue from later in the novel--Part Three, chapter four to be exact. In this passage, Raskolnikov and some other men debate the ideas advanced in an essay that Raskolnikov has recently published. Among these men is a policeman, Porfiry, who has good reason to suspect that Raskolnikov has recently committed a brutal murder. (These suspicions are correct, of course. After all, it is Dostoevsky.)
To help you place the Dostoevsky passages in the larger context of the novel, I'll put a copy of the Cliff Notes for Crime and Punishment on our reserve shelf. Look over the plot summary on pages ten and eleven, and also consider the summaries of the chapters from which our passages are taken. For those summaries, see pages 18 and 38.
As you consider the passages from Crime and Punishment, try to imagine why they exerted such a powerful hold on Bakhtin. Do the passages help to illustrate or clarify his ideas about the "dialogic" character of language? Do they help to explain why he thinks that Dostoevsky was an "artist of the idea"? Do they show you why Dostoevsky's treatment of ideas might seem to differ from that of almost any other novelist?
The Heteroglot Novel (1935): 112-20
In this piece, Bakhtin expands his view of the novel, suggesting that the "dialogic" qualities he'd once identified more or less exclusively with Dostoevsky are actually present (at least to some degree) in almost all novelistic fiction. (It's interesting to note that dialogism is sometimes attributed to one particular author, at other times to one particular genre, and at other times to language itself. What if anything can we conclude from all this?)
As you consider the piece, think about what Bakhtin might have in mind when he speaks about ways of creating "the image of a language." Bakhtin says that there are three principal ways of creating such images, and he lays them out on pages 117-20. See if you can keep them all straight. Finally, try to figure out what Bakhtin might have in mind when he speaks about novelistic dialogue as "open-ended." Why would he see such "openendedness" as a virtue rather than a fault?
What next?