Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) was a Russian philosopher and literary critic whose work explored language, social interaction, and the novel. His best-known ideas include dialogism, polyphony, and the carnivalesque.

Dialogism: The idea that utterances gain meaning through their relations with other utterances. Bakhtin made dialogism a foundation for understanding language and literary form.
Dostoevsky's novels: The novels of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, including works such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. Bakhtin treated these novels as exemplary cases of independent voices interacting.
Vitebsk: A city in present-day Belarus that was a major cultural center in the early twentieth century. Bakhtin lived and worked there amid the artistic ferment of the 1920s.
Structuralism: An approach that explains cultural phenomena through underlying systems of relations and rules. Bakhtin emphasized social utterances and interaction rather than treating language chiefly as a closed system.
Mikhail Bakhtin's influence: The reception and later use of Bakhtin’s ideas across literary studies and other disciplines. His concepts became central to debates about voice, culture, and the novel.
Polyphony: A narrative structure in which distinct characters’ voices retain meaningful independence from the author’s voice. Bakhtin used the term to describe the distinctive interaction of voices in Dostoevsky’s novels.
Rabelais and His World: Bakhtin’s study of François Rabelais, which connects Renaissance literature with popular carnival culture. This book develops his account of the carnivalesque and grotesque realism.
Leningrad: The name of Saint Petersburg from 1924 to 1991, during the Soviet period. Bakhtin’s intellectual circle formed in Petrograd, later renamed Leningrad.
Monologism: A mode of discourse that subordinates distinct voices to a single authoritative perspective. Bakhtin contrasted monologism with the plurality he identified in Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novels.
Dialogic pedagogy: An approach to teaching that treats learning as developing through exchange among voices and perspectives. Educational theorists adapted Bakhtin’s account of dialogue to classroom interaction.

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