Literary Historiography: A1 The First Round (12.09.

2013)
1. Shwetha C.S For Bakhtin, the concept of dialogism is very crucial for the analysis of the literary works. In the essay, Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff, he asserts that the study of literature should take place in an interdisciplinary space as there is a dialogic relation between literature and the cultural history. I will attempt below to analyze Bakhtins idea of dialogism in relation to his preference for the interdisciplinary approach to literary studies. Literature, for him, is a conglomeration of multiple utterances that reveals the struggle or the dialogue between various socio-cultural institutions. He says that both literature and language are pluralistic in nature because they operate in a multi-cultural or a multi-lingual space. The concept of a monoglot culture is problematic for Bakhtin because he states that the culture of a nation is not only influenced by other cultures; it also tries to negotiate and reassess the relationship between the past and the present. Because of his preference for dialogism over monologism, he criticizes the idea of hierarchisation of languages or literary genres. In the essay, Epic and Novel, he declares the modernity of novel as a literary genre because it was born under polyglotic conditions, i.e. at a time when the cultural or the linguistic boundaries between nations had seized to exist. In this actively polyglot world, completely new relationships are established between language and its object and this is fraught with enormous consequences for all ready completed genres that had been formed during eras of closed and deaf monoglossia. According to Bakhtin, monologism highlights the enclosed quality of a literary genre as a result of which critical engagement or enquiry becomes impossible. Epic as a monoglot literary genre separates itself from other genres and assumes a theological quality. For Bakhtin, the history of literature is nothing but the history of the conflicts between various literary genres. Monologism mystifies languages or genres and thus it is more of a political discourse rather than a historically verified reality. Bakhtin believes that the emancipation of the literary scholarship can only be achieved if the hierarchies between the literary genres are not only challenged but reversed. This idea of the reversal of hierarchies can also be connected to Walter Benjamins concept of the destruction of aura through mechanical reproductions which results in the transformation of cult value into exhibition value there by resulting in the democratization of art space.

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