Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T02:09:02.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Narrative, Modernism, and the Crisis of Authority: A Bakhtinian Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Daphna Erdibast-Vulcan
Daphna Erdibast-Vulcan
Affiliation:
Department of English Literature, University of Haifa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The paper offers a reconstruction of one aspect of Bakhtin's philosophy, focusing on a deep-seated ambivalence that has been largely overlooked in studies based on his late works. Bakhtin's early work, 1920–23, is set within a distinctly metaphysical framework, an outlook that seems diametrically opposite to what has become known as the Bakhtinian conception of culture. That ideological rift is manifest in the different treatment of Dostoevsky's works (and, by extension, the different attitude to the secularization of Western culture) in these two phases.

Extrapolating Bakhtin's perspective onto Dostoevsky's work, the paper briefly outlines a theory of modernism as a “crisis of authority,” with particular emphasis on the role of closure — i.e., retrospective framing, both literary and existential — in the absence of metaphysical grounding.

Finally, the paper offers a comment on Bakhtin's wholesale assimilation into the postmodernist canon, in an attempt to problematize it and to reformulate some relevant and persistent questions on the significance of narrativity in human existence.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 143 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bakhtin, M. M. [ca. 1920–1923] 1990. “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity.” In Art and Answerability, translated by Lipunov, Vadim, edited by Michael Hoiquist and Vadim Lipunov. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. [1934–1935] 1981. “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination, translated by Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael, edited by Michael Hoiquist, 259–422. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. 1959–1961. “The Problem of the Text.” In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, translated by McGee, Vern W., edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, 103–31. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. [1961] 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Translated and edited by Emerson, Caryl. Theory and History of Literature, vol. 8. Minneapolis: Univer sity of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Michael. 1990. “How Primordial Is Narrative?” In Narrative in Culture, edited by Nash, Christopher, 172–97. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. [1936] 1970. “The Storyteller.” In Illuminations, translated by Zohn, Harry, edited by Hannah Arendt. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter. 1984. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative.Google Scholar
Caws, Mary Ann. 1985. Reading Frames in Modern Fiction. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Joseph. [1911] 1923. Under Western Eyes. London: Dent.Google Scholar
Heller, Erich. [1952] 1975. “The Hazard of Modern Poetry.” In his The Disinherit ed Mind, 2nd ed. London: Bowes & Bowes.Google Scholar
Holquist, Michael. 1990. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. New Accents Series. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kermode, Frank 1967. The Sense of an Ending. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Luk´cs, Georg. [1920] 1971. The Theory of the Novel. Translated by Bostock, Anna. London: Merlin.Google Scholar
Maclntyre, Alasdair. [1981] 1985. After Virtue. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Miller, D. A. 1981. Narrative and Its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 1981. “Narrative Time.” In On Narrative, edited by Mitchell, W. J. T., 165–86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 1968. Poetic Closure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1984. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Principle. Translated by Godzich, Viad. Theory and History of Literature, vol. 8. Manchester: Manches-ter University Press.Google Scholar
Torgovnick, Marianna. 1981. Closure in the Novel. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar