Bakhtin, Mikhail

Bakhtin, Mikhail (Mikhailovich)

(born Nov. 17, 1895, Orel, Russia—died March 7, 1975, Moscow, U.S.S.R.) Russian literary theorist and philosopher of language. His works frequently offended the Soviet authorities, and in 1929 he was exiled from Vitsyebsk to Kazakhstan. He is especially known for Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1929), which advanced theories that he further developed in The Dialogic Imagination (1975). His wide-ranging ideas significantly influenced Western thinking in cultural history, linguistics, literary theory, and aesthetics.

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Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich 

Born Nov. 5 (17), 1895, in the city of Orel. Soviet Russian literary scholar.

In 1920, Bakhtin began his pedagogical and literary work. In his book Problems in Dostoevsky’s Works (1929) he studied the polyphonic character of the author’s artistic thought. In his book on F. Rabelais (1965), Bakhtin analyzed the essence of the comic and the grotesque, the popular “carnivalization” of art. He is also the author of articles on L. N. Tolstoy (1930) and works on the theory of literature.

WORKS

Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1963.
Tvorchestvo F. Rable i narodnaia kul’tura Srednevekov’ia i Renessansa. Moscow, 1965.
“Epos i roman.” Voprosy literatury, 1970, no. 1.

REFERENCES

Lunacharskii, A. V. “O’mnogogolosnosti’ Dostoevskogo.” In his book Stat’i o literature. Moscow, 1957.
Shubin, L. “Gumanizm Dostoevskogo i’dostoevshchina’.” Voprosy literatury, 1965, no. 1.
Pospelov,G. “Preuvelicheniia ot uvlecheniia.” Voprosy literatury, 1965, no. 1.
Pinskii, L. “Rable v novom osveshchenii.” Voprosy literatury, 1966, no. 6.