Critical Approaches to Literature: Russian Contributions

The topic for Spring 2022 is Bakhtin in Context, Then and Now, a close chronological reading of Mikhail Bakhtin's central texts. Context is supplied by several early Formalist essays and by Yuri Lotman's semiotic theory of culture. Each session discusses one set of Bakhtinian ideas weighed against a later strong critic, both pro and contra. Our objective: to reassess the inflated residue of the global "Bakhtin Boom" of the 1970s-90s and its usefulness today by examining portions of Bakhtin's most important texts (now reconstituted in authoritative annotated versions), together with the wisest objections and most productive expansions.