Mikhail Bakhtin ; creation of a prosaics

277 Pages·1990·29.979 MB·English

by  Caryl Emerson, Gary Saul Morson

..
Creation
of a
Prosaics
Gary Saul Morson & Caryl Emerson
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
For Jane and Ivan,
our superaddressees
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 1990 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
Original printing 1990
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
09 08 07 06 05
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Published with the assistance of the
National Endowment for the Humanities,
an independent federal agency
Title-page photo by Robert Louis Jackson
..
Acknowledgments
Helena Goscilo patiently searched every page of this manu
script for solecisms, awkward sentences, and unclear formulations.
We are indebted to her, to William Mills Todd III, whose comments
guided our revisions, and to Sara Burson, who helped track down
obscure facts and bibliographical references. Jane Morson keyed on
countless adjustments to the text under considerable time pressure
and with grace and humor. Unflaggingly conscientious, Annette
Pein verified all citations. In the course of writing this book, we
have benefited from discussions with too many people to enumer
ate here, but special appreciation is due to Carol Avins, Michael
Andre Bernstein, Wayne C. Booth, Victor Erlich, Robert Fagles,
Gerald Graff, Robert Louis Jackson, Aron Katsenelinboigen, Law
rence Lipking, Sidney Monas, Nina Perlina, Alfred Rieber, Frank
Silbajoris, Anna Tavis, Stephen Toulmin, Charles Townsend, and
Alexander Zholkovsky. Patient and wise in her advice, Helen Tar
tar was, as always, a model editor.
G.S.M.
C.E.
..
Contents
Biographical Sketch Xlll
Abbreviations xvm
Introduction
PART I: Key Concepts and Periods 13
1 • Global Concepts: Prosaics, Unfinalizability,
Dialogue 15
Prosaics, 15. Prosaics and everyday language, 21. Pro
saics as a philosophy of the ordinary, 23. Prosaics and
ethics, 25. Prosaics and systems, 27. The unnoticed and
the ordinary, 32. Unfinalizability, 36. Unfinalizability as
immanent, 38. Bakhtin versus Bakunin, 40. Unfinal
izability and historicity, 43. Dialogue, 49. Toward dia
logue, 52. Dialogue and other cultures, 54. Monologiza
tion, 56. Truth as dialogic, 59.
2 • The Shape of a Career 63
Four periods, 64. 1919-24: The early wntmgs, 68.
Responsibility and architectonics, 71. Others: Real and
"unspecified" potential, 74. "The Problem of Content,
Material, and Form": Confronting the Formalists over
content, 77. 1924-29: The potential of the word, 83.
The 193o's to the early 195o's: Historicizing and idealiz-
ing the word, 86. Carnival: The apotheosis of unfinal-
izability, 89. The early 195o's to 1975: Spokesman for
the profession, 96.
3 '" The Disputed Texts 101
The dispute, 102. Proving actions by alleging motives,
109. Are the Marxist books Marxist?, III. The debate
does not abate, II2. What is at stake, II6.
PART II: Problems of Authorship 121
4 '" Metalinguistics: The Dialogue of Authorship 123
Utterance versus sentence, 125. Active understanding:
The joint creation of the word, 127. Dialogue, 130.
x Contents Contents x1
Authors: Voice and intonation, 13 3. The superaddressee, Genre memory, 295. Genres and sociological reduction
135. Speaking about the "already-spoken-about," 136. ism, 297. Novels and other genres, 299. Novels and nov
Heteroglossia, 139. Dialogized heteroglossia, 142. Dia elization, 300.
logue in the second sense, 146. Passive double-voiced 8 " Prosaics and the Language of the Novel 306
words: Stylization, 149. Passive double-voiced words:
The Galilean linguistic consciousness, 309. Galileo the
Parody and skaz, I 52. Active double-voiced words, r 54. novelist, 3 II. Poetics versus prosaics, 317. Prose versus
The word with a loophole, I 59. Voloshinov on reported
poetry, 319. Hybridization: The real life of novels, 325-
speech, 161. Authority and the discourse of the other,
Character zones, 329. The English comic novel and
164. Indirect, direct, and quasi-direct discourse, 166.
"common language," 330. Pseudo-objectivity, 3 3 2.
Given and created, 170.
Hybridization: Some refinements and extensions, 3 3 5-
5 " Psychology: Authoring a Self The mutual interillumination of languages: organic and
The context of the 192o's, 173. Act and self, 176. Pre intentional hybrids, 341. Novelistic language and inner
tendership and alibis for being, 179. "Author and Hero": life, 343. The novel's two stylistic lines, 344- "Extra
Seeing other bodies and being seen, 184. Psychoanaly generic literariness," 348. The roots of homelessness,
sis, fantasy, and the creation of art, 186. Integrity, 350. "Ennobled" language, 353. The discourse of pa
creativity, and form, 189. Spirit versus soul, loophole thos, 355. Incomprehension and gay deception, 357-
versus rhythm, 192. From the nonpolyphonic to the Canonization and reaccentuation, 361.
polyphonic hero, 196. Voloshinov: Psychology and ide
9 '" The Chronotope 366
ology, 200. Voloshinov: The outer word and inner
The chronotope and time-space: Kant and Einstein, 366.
speech, 203. Voloshinov versus Vygotsky and Bakhtin,
Chronotopic questions and possibilities, 369. Chrono
205. Freudianism: Bourgeois "insideness" as the hope
topic thinking and the novel, 372. Chronotopic motifs,
lessness ofhistory, 208. Lev Vygotsky: Speaking, think
374. Time and space in the Greek romance, 375- The
ing, and the emerging of self, 210. Influx of sense and
Greek romance: The image of a person and the idea of
the work of utterance, 214. Bakhtin in the third period:
testing, 380. Time in the adventure novel of everyday
The novelistic self, 216. Innerly persuasive and au
life, 384. Spying on everyday life, 388. Ancient biogra
thoritative discourse, 218. The novelistic self on trial:
phy and autobiography, 392. Historical inversion and
Carnival and the uncloseable loophole, 223. The car
eschatology, 397. The chivalric romance and the vision,
nivalistic self, 225. The later writings: A return to the
398. Prosaic allegorization and the intervalic chrono
beginnings, 229.
tope, 401. The essay on Goethe and the Bildungsroman:
6 " Polyphony: Authoring a Hero 231 The prehistory of becoming, 405. Novels of emergence,
Polyphony and the dialogic sense of truth, 234. Polyph 408. "Creative necessity" and "the fullness of time,"
ony and the new position of the author, 237. Polyphony 413. Seeing time, 415. Epic versus novel, "absolute
and the surplus, 241. Polyphony as a theory of the crea past" versus the "zone of familiar contact," 419. Pres
tive process, 243. Toward prosaics: Plot and structure entness and the "surplus of humanness," 423. Chrono
versus polyphony and eventness, 247. Closure and unity, tope and dialogue, 425. The "image of the author," 429.
251. The unity of creative eventness, 256. Time and The gates of the chronotope, 432.
character in Dostoevsky, 259. Personality and noncoin IO ., Laughter and the Camivalesque 433
cidence, 263. Ethics and "secondhand" definitions, 265.
Parody and parodic doubles, 433. Laughter chronotopes:
Embodiment versus potential, 435. Carnival comes to
PART I I I: Theories of the Novel
Bakhtin's favorite genre, 441. Rabelais and the rest
7 " Theory of Genres of Bakhtin's world, 443. Polarization and the "public
Reading from the bottom up, 272. The eyes of genre, square word," 445. Double-voiced criticism?, 447. Po
275. Literary history, 277. Forms of artistic thinking, larization, the Abbey of Theleme, and the reevaluation
280. Meanings an@ potentials, 284. Speech genres, 290. of Renaissance humanism, 448. The consolations of car-
"
xn Contents "
nival, 452. The historical fate of folklore laughter, 454.
Carnival and the two editions of the Dostoevsky book,
456. The carnivalization of literature and the seriocomic
genres, 460. Reduced laughter, 463. Polyphony and
Biographical Sketch
menippean satire, 465. Genre conditions, 466. Problems
with the carnival approach to Dostoevsky, 467. The
carnivalesque among Bakhtin's global concepts, 469.
Notes 473 Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was born on November 16,
Works Cited 493 1895, in Orel (south of Moscow), the second of five children in a
cultured family ofliberal views. His father worked as manager of a
Index 501
bank. Bakhtin grew up in two cosmopolitan border towns of the
Russian Empire, Vilnius and later Odessa, and then earned a degree
in classics and philology at the University of Petrograd (1913-18).
Charts
His education in the classics is evident in his choice of topics and
examples in his work.
Prosaics and its rivals 32
After graduation, to avoid the terrible privations in the capital
The shape of a career 66
during the Civil War, Bakhtin moved to the small town of Nevel in
Contents of the 1929 Dostoevsky book 84
western Russia. There he worked as a schoolteacher and partici
Discourse types (adaptation of chart in PDP, ch. 5) 147
pated in lecture series and study circles devoted to the relationship
Styles of reported speech (Voloshinov) 164
between philosophy, religion, and politics. In 1920, Bakhtin re
Classification of novels in the Bildungsroman essay 412-13 settled in Vitebsk (the hometown of Marc Chagall and a center for
the artistic avant-garde), where his study circle, including among
others Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev, continued to
meet. During the early r92o's, Bakhtin defined himself against the
neo-Kantianism of his own mentors and worked on a massive
treatise concerning the nature of moral responsibility and aesthet
ics. In 1924, with the country more stabilized economically and po
litically, Bakhtin and his wife-who quickly became indispensable
to her impractical, often ailing, and yet remarkably productive hus
band-moved back to Leningrad.
Most of Bakhtin's associates in his circle were able to find official
and stable employment during the 192o's, because of either their
Marxism or their versatility; Bakhtin was not. This was due in part
to his illness, a bone disease that left him frequently bedridden and
resulted in the amputation of his right leg in 1938. In part it was due
to Bakhtin's lack of political credentials under the new regime.
In 1929, Bakhtin was arrested. In the mass raids on intellectuals
in the early Stalinist years, almost any political eccentricity could
serve as pretext; the particular charge against Bakhtin concerned his
alleged activity in the underground Russian Orthodox Church. It
is not clear to what extent the young Bakhtin actually involved
..
xiv Biographical Sketch " Biographical Sketch xv
himself in the various above- and underground Christian study Bakhtin's thought have been more active than their Soviet counter
groups during this time. He was sentenced to ten years on the So parts in the difficult task of assessing the legacy. If hopes are real
lovetsky Islands, a death camp in the Soviet Far North. Thanks to ized, this situation will change, as it becomes more possible in the
the intervention of influential friends and to his own precarious Soviet Union to analyze the writings of Bakhtin and his associates
health, Bakhtin's sentence was commuted to six years internal exile dispassionately. A Soviet Academy Edition of the works of the
in Kazakhstan. During the 193o's, while working as a bookkeeper Bakhtin circle now is projected for the mid-199o's.
on a collective farm and at other odd jobs in exile, Bakhtin wrote
his most famous essays on the theory of the novel.
He also researched a major work on Rabelais, which he was to
submit as his doctoral dissertation in 1941 to the Gorky Institute of
World Literature in Moscow. The Rabelais project-with its irrev
erence, celebration of carnival and sexuality, and utopian, philo
sophical anarchism-became something of a scandal. A degree (al
though not the doktorat) was eventually granted to Bakhtin, but the
book was not published until 1965.
In 1936, Bakhtin took up a professorship at the fledgling and re
mote Mordovia State Teachers College in the town of Saransk, east
of Moscow. There he taught courses in Russian and world literature
until the rumors (and soon the reality) of new political purges
always a danger to former exiles-prompted him to resign and re
tire to a still less visible town. At the end of the Second World War,
he returned to work at the Teachers College. His relative obscurity
and low profile in print during this time of mass repression most
likely saved his life.
Bakhtin's final years are the story of rediscovery and rising fame.
In the 195o's, on the other side of the Stalinist night, a group of
Moscow graduate students who had read Bakhtin's 1929 Dostoev
sky book learned, to their astonishment, that its author was still
alive, teaching at what had by then been upgraded to the University
of Saransk. "Pilgrimages" to Saransk, to a survivor from a past be
lieved lost, took on the character of a temporal crossing. Bakhtin
was persuaded to rework the Dostoevsky book for a second edi
tion. Once this book was reapproved for print (1963), other long
delayed Bakhtin manuscripts were published. Bakhtin became a
bellwether for a post-Stalinist rethinking of literary studies, his
advice sought by both the structuralist semioticians of the Tartu
School and the more conservative Marxist-Leninist humanists of
the Soviet establishment.
By the time of his death on March 7, 1975, Bakhtin was already
the object of a cult in the Soviet Union. The cult spread through
Paris to the United States in the 198o's. This phase has somewhat
receded in Russia and in the West, but to date Western scholars of
"
Abbreviations
All works below are by Bakhtin unless otherwise identified.
Anthologies
The 1986 Russian collection M. M. Bakhtin, Literaturno-kriti
cheskie stat'i. Ed. S. G. Bocharov and V. V. Kozhinov.
Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1986.
The 1979 Russian collection M. M. Bakhtin, Estetika slovesnogo
tvorchestva.E d. S. G. Bocharov. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979.
The 1975 Russian collection M. Bakhtin, Voprosy literatury i es
tetiki: Issledovaniia raznykh let. Moscow: Khudozhestven
naia literatura, I 97 5-
DI The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Ed.
Michael Holquist. Tr. Caryl Emerson and Michael Hol
quist. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981.
RB Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges. Ed. Gary Saul
Morson and Caryl Emerson. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
Univ. Press, 1989.
SG& M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Ed.
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Tr. Vern W. McGee.
Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1986.
Individual Works
AiG "Avtor i geroi v esteticheskoi deiatel'nosti" [Author and hero
in aesthetic activity]. In the 1979 Russian collection, pp. 7-
r So. Translations ours.
BiK "M. M. Bakhtin i M. I. Kagan (po materialam semeinogo
arkhiva)." Publikatsiia K. Nevel'skoi. [Correspondence of
Mikhail Bakhtin and Matvei Kagan from the 192o's, from
the Kagan family archive.] In Pamyat', no. 4 (Moscow
samizdat, 1979; Paris: YMCA Press, 1981), pp. 249-81.
Portions of this material have since appeared in the USSR
in "Sovetskaia Mordoviia" and reviewed in Voprosy litera
tury, no. 7 (1989) ("Sredi zhurnalov i gazet": "Novoe o
M. M. Bakhtine").
.. ..
xvm Abbreviations Abbreviations xix
BSHR "The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo. 3rd ed. Moscow: Khudo
Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel)." In zhestvennaia literatura, 1972.
SG&, pp. IO- 59. Russian text in the 1979 Russian collec PND "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse." In DI,
tion, pp. 188-236. pp. 41-83. Russian text in the 1975 Russian collection,
DiN "Discourse in the Novel." In DI, pp. 259-422. Russian text pp. 408-46.
in the 1975 Russian collection, pp. 72-233. PS "Problema soderzhaniia, materiala, i formy v slovesnom khu
EaN "Epic and Novel." In DI, pp. 3-40. Russian text in the 1975 dozhestvennom tvorchestve" (The problem of content,
collection, pp. 447-83. material, and form in verbal creative art]. In the 1975 Rus
FTC "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes sian collection, pp. 6-71. Translations ours.
Toward a Historical Poetics." In DI, pp. 84-258. Russian PT "The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the
text in the 1975 Russian collection, pp. 234-407. Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analy
IiO "Iskusstvo i otvetstvennost"' [Art and responsibility]. In the sis." In SG&, pp. 103-3 r. Russian text in the 1979 Russian
1979 Russian collection, pp. 5-6. Translations ours. collection, pp. 28 I - 30 7.
KFP "K filosofii postupka" [Toward a philosophy of the act]. In PTD Problemy tvorchestvaD ostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevsky's
the 1984-85 issue of Filosofiia i sotsiologiian auki i tekhniki, creative art; the 1929 edition of the Dostoevsky book].
a yearbook of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Moscow: Leningrad: Priboi, 1929. Translations ours.
Nauka, 1986, pp. 80-160. Translations ours. RAHW Rabelais and His World. Tr. Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge,
M:FM The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Intro Mass.: MIT Press, 1968. For the Russian text, see Tvor
duction to SociologicalP oetics. By P. N. Medvedev. Tr. Al chestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul'tura srednevekov'ia i re
bert J. Wehrle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, nessansa. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1965.
1985. Published under the names M. M. Bakhtin / P. N. RQ "Response to a Question from the Novyi Mir Editorial Staff."
Medvedev. T_his translation was first published under the In SG&, pp. 1-9. Russian text in the 1979 Russian collec
names P. N. Medvedev / M. M. Bakhtin (Baltimore, Md.: tion, pp. 328-35.
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978). For the Russian text, SG "The Problem of Speech Genres." In SG&, pp. 60- 102. Rus
see Mikhail Bakhtin [sic], Formal'nyi metod v literaturove sian text in the 1979 Russian collection, pp. 237-80.
denii. New York: Serebrianyi vek, 1982. Originally pub TF1929 "Three Fragments from the 1929 Dostoevsky Book."
lished as P. N. Medvedev, Formal'nyi metod v literaturo Appendix 1 in PDP, pp. 275-82. Russian text in PTD,
vedenii (Kriticheskoe vvedenie v sotsiologicheskuiu poetiku). pp. 3-4, I00-102, 238-41.
Leningrad: Priboi, 1928. TPr Preface to vol. II (dramas) of Tolstoy's works. In RB,
MHS "Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences." In pp. 227- 36. Russian text in the 1986 Russian collection,
SG&, pp. 159-72. Russian text in the 1979 Russian collec pp. 90-99.
tion, pp. 361-73. TP2 Preface to vol. 13 (Resurrection) of Tolstoy's works. In RB,
M:VLP V laboratoriip isatelia [In the writer's laboratory]. By P. N. pp. 237- 57. Russian text in the 1986 Russian collection,
Medvedev. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1971. Originally pp. IOO- 120.
published in Leningrad by Izdatel'stvo pisatelei v Lenin TRD B "Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky Book." Appen
grade, in 1933. dix 2 in PDP, pp. 283-302. Russian text in the 1979 Rus
N70-71 "From Notes Made in 1970-71." In SG&, pp. 132-58. sian collection, pp. 308-27.
Russian text in the 1979 Russian collection, pp. 336-60. V:DiL "Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry (Concerning
PDP Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics [the 1963 edition of the Dos Sociological Poetics)." By V. N. Voloshinov. In V:F,
toevsky book]. Ed. and tr. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: pp. 93- 116. Originally published as "Slovo v zhizni i slovo
Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984. For the Russian text, see v poezii." Zvezda 6 (1926).
..
xx Abbreviations
V:F Freudianism: A Critical Sketch. By V. N. Voloshinov. Ed. I. R.
Titunik and Neil R. Bruss. Tr. I. R. Titunik. Blooming
ton: Indiana Univ. Press, 1987. Earlier edition published as
Freudianism: A Marxist Critique. New York: Harcourt Brace,
MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
1976. For the Russian text, see M. M. Bakhtin / V. N.
Voloshinov, Freidizm: Kriticheskii ocherk. New York: Cha
lidze, 1983. Originally published as V. N. Voloshinov,
Freidizm: Kriticheskii ocherk. Moscow-Leningrad: Gosu
Glory be to God for dappled things-
darstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1927.
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;
V:MPL Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. By V. N. Vo
loshinov. Tr. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik. New
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
York: Seminar, 1973. For the Russian text, see Marksizm i
All things counter, original, spare, strange.
filosofiia iazyka: Osnovnye problemy sotsiologicheskogo metoda
-Gerard Manley Hopkins,
v nauke o iazyke. 2nd ed. Leningrad: Priboi, 1930.
"Pied Beauty"
Zam "Zametki." In the 1986 Russian collection, pp. 509- 3 I.