The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)

I've since become very enamored of Bakhtin's ideas and I think now that this collection was a wonderful place to start. Yes, Bakhtin is demanding but once you step up to the challenge you will find yourself rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.

The key to this whole collection is the final essay, Discourse in the Novel. This is perhaps his most influential work and it contains some very interesting ideas about the novel, the definition of language and how labguages interact with one another. I would not recommend that a newcomer to Bakhtin start here. If you pick up this volume start with the first essay, Epic and Novel, and go from there. The writing gets progressively more dense and the ideas build on each other so you'll be quite lost (like I was) if you try to tackle Discourse first.


Bakhtin's most important and influential work on the novel   January 2, 2001
Walter O. Koenig (San Diego, California, USA)
56 out of 56 found this review helpful

This book consists of four essays of Bakhtin's "Middle Period", two short and two longer works which have been arranged, according to complexity, with the most accessible essay first and the most difficult last. Cooincidentally, this is also the reverse order in which they were written. None of these essays were avaiable in English before the present translation/compilation by Emerson and Holquist, and judging from its many reprintings (the 10th by 1996), quotations and misquotations, and various interpretations, it is the most influential of Bakhtin's works.

Some brief notes on the four Essays:

1. "Epic and Novel" dated 1941 - A rather straightforward comparison of the Novel and the Epic. Its aim is to show the distinctiveness of the Novel. This can be seen as a transitional essay between the Chronotope Essay and the Bildungsroman Fragment. It is well organized and introduces several characteristics unique to the novel such as three-dimensionality, imagery and openendedness.

2. "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse" dated 1940 - This is in essence a brief history of the novel according to Bakhtin. It concentrates on style, theory and as the title states, discourse, beginning with Greek works and going to the Renaissance. Conceptually this is strikingly similar to Erich Auerbach's "Mimesis". This essay is incomplete.

3. "Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel" dated 1937-38 - Another long (175 page) discussion on the distinctiveness of the novel. The concept of the Chronotope is introduced simply as "time space" and the essay seeks to show its use from the Greek Romance to the novel of the 19th Century. Bakhtin inserts here also a discussion of the "Rabelaisian Chrontope", the role of the clown, etc. Special emphasis is also given to the Blidungsroman. This essay, it seems to me, is essentially, Bakhtin's own favorite Reading list in which he experiments with his own concept of Chronotope, skillfully fitting it to each work. Despite its digressions it is basically a chronological presentation.

4. "Discourse in the Novel" dated 1934-35 - Another lengthy essay which is in essence Bakhtin's discussion of his philosophy of language. This essay also seems to be unfinished. It consists of five distinct parts in which Bakhtin experiments with different approaches to discourse in the novel. As is often the case with Bakhtin, this essay is also open-ended.

I find this compliation of four essays to be most stimulating. It seems to be well translated and edited. Ample footnotes assist the reader with Bakhtin's many, sometimes obscure, literary references. In my opinion, particularly the last two essays, constitute Baktin's most important work on the novel. Those expecting distinct conclusions and theories will be disappointed, because this is not the aim here at all. Bakhtin instead provides many different starting points from which to continue the study of the novel. This is, for example, what makes the chronotope indefinable, because it is constantly changing. I highly recommend this surprisingly accessible book. I believe that it is, along with "Speech Genres and other late Essays" Bakhtin's most important work on the novel.


damnably brilliant   April 24, 2000
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

Bakhtin arguably at his best. Sure the final essay in the volume is not an easy read, but if you think Bakhtin is hard to read try Heidegger when he grooves along with his own lingo. Bakhtin's key idea of contextual language and the many voicedness of novels against the backdrop of an author's voice and that of his times is prehaps the sum total of what the novel as a genre is. In fact, the novel is not quite a genre but an ongoing process that escapes ossification as it changes with the times. Wonderfully done.