|
Polyphony (literature)
In literature, polyphony () is a feature of narrative, which includes a diversity of simultaneous points of view and voices. Caryl Emerson describes it as "a decentered authorial stance that grants validity to all voices". The concept was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin, using a metaphor based on the musical term polyphony. Bakhtin's primary example of polyphony was Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influent ...'s prose. According to Bakhtin, the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky's novels is "''a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices''". His major characters are, "''by the very nature of his creative design, not only objects of authorial discourse but also subjects of their own directly signif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the philosophy of language, ethics, and literary theory. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions (Marxism, semiotics, structuralism, religious criticism) and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s. Early life Bakhtin was born in Oryol, Russian Empire, Russia, to an old family of the nobility. His father was the manager of a bank and worked in several cities. For this reason Bakhtin spen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caryl Emerson
Caryl Emerson is an American literary critic, slavist and translator. She is best known for her books and scholarly commentaries on the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. She has translated some of Bakhtin's most influential works, including '' Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics'' and '' The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin''. Emerson was Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature at Princeton University from 1988 until her retirement in 2015. From 1980 to 1987 she was a professor of Russian Literature at Cornell. Biography Caryl Emerson grew up in Manhattan, Kansas, and Rochester, New York. Her father was a professor of theory and acoustics at the Eastman School of Music. Emerson completed her undergraduate studies at Cornell, majoring in Russian literature. She received her master's degrees in Russian studies and Russian language teaching from Harvard. She worked for some time as a secondary school teach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphony
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ( homophony). Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term ''polyphony'' is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Also, as opposed to the ''species'' terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either "pitch-against-pitch" / "point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in one part with melismas of varying lengths in another. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent (1999) calls "dyadic counterpoint", with each part being written generally against one other part, with all parts modified if needed in the end. This point-against-point conception is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include '' Crime and Punishment'' (1866), ''The Idiot'' (1869), ''Demons'' (1872), '' The Adolescent'' (1875) and '' The Brothers Karamazov'' (1880). His '' Notes from Underground'', a novella published in 1864, is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature. Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died of tuberculosis on 27 February 1837, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dialogue (Bakhtin)
The twentieth century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote extensively on the concept of dialogue. Although Bakhtin's work took many different directions over the course of his life, dialogue always remained the "master key" to understanding his worldview. Bakhtin described the ''open-ended dialogue'' as "the single adequate form for ''verbally expressing '' authentic human life". In it "a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium." Bakhtin's understanding of dialogue Dialogue is usually analyzed as some kind of interaction between two monads on the basis of a pre-conceived model. Bakhtin regards this conception as a consequence of 'theoretism'—the tendency, particularly in modern western thought, to understand events according to a pre- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Idea In Dostoevsky
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun '' the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Dialogic Imagination
''The Dialogic Imagination'' (full title: ''The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin'') is a book on the nature and development of novelistic prose, comprising four essays by the twentieth century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. It was edited and translated into English by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson, who gave the work its English title. Holquist and Emerson chose the essays from a collection of six essays by Bakhtin published in Moscow under the title Вопросы литературы и естетики (''Voprosy literatury i estetiki''; Problems of Literature and Aesthetics). According to Holquist, the unifying theme of the essays is "the novel and its relation to language." The title refers to the central place of the concept of dialogue in Bakhtin's theory of the novel. The novel, unlike other literary forms, embraces heterogeneity in discourse and meaning: it re-creates a reality that is based on the interactions of a variety ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Problems Of Dostoevsky's Poetics
''Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics'' (, ''Problemy poètiki Dostoevskogo'') is a book by the 20th century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. It was originally published in 1929 in Leningrad under the title ''Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art'' (, ''Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo'') but was re-published with significant additions under the new title in 1963 in Moscow. The book was first translated into English in 1973 by R. William Rotsel but this version is now out of print. Caryl Emerson's 1984 translation is the version now used for academic discussion in English. ''Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics'' is considered to be a seminal work in Dostoevsky studies as well as an important contribution to literary theory. Bakhtin introduces a number of key concepts, such as polyphony and carnivalisation, to elucidate what he saw as unique in Dostoevsky's literary art. He argues that Dostoevsky's works are essentially ''dialogical'', unfolding on the basis o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Saul Morson
Gary Saul Morson (born April 19, 1948) is an American literary critic and Slavist. He is particularly known for his scholarly work on the great Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Morson is Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. Prior to this he was chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania for many years. Academic career Gary Saul Morson was born in New York City and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He then went to Yale University. He completed his Ph.D. degree at Yale. In 1974 Morson started teaching at the University of Pennsylvania where he later became chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Since 1986 he has been teaching at Northwestern University. Morson is the editor of a scholarly book series titled Studies in Russian Literature and Theory (SRLT) published by Northwestern Universi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narratology
Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. The term is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical lineage is traceable to Aristotle (''Poetics (Aristotle), Poetics'') but modern narratology is agreed to have begun with the Russian formalism, Russian formalists, particularly Vladimir Propp (''Morphology of the Folktale'', 1928), and Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia, dialogism, and the chronotope first presented in ''The Dialogic Imagination'' (1975). Cognitive narratology is a more recent development that allows for a broader understanding of narrative. Rather than focus on the structure of the story, cognitive narratology asks "how humans make sense of stories" and "how humans use stories as sense-making instruments". Defining narrative Structuralist narratologists like Rimmon-Kenan define narrative fiction as "the nar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
