Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T02:31:38.176Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Polyphony and the Atomic Age: Bakhtin's Assimilation of an Einsteinian Universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jonathan Stone
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mikhail Bakhtin described a novelistic world bound to the reader's point of view and perception of reality. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity justified Bakhtin's elevation of the reader to a central position in his theory of the novel. This essay examines Bakhtin's engagement with Einsteinian relativity in the context of two of his most influential contributions to critical discourse—polyphony and the chronotope. Originating in the 1920s, Bakhtin's notion of polyphony was initially an expression of his Kantian mind-set. When Bakhtin reworked his formulation of polyphony in 1963 (having already broached the topic of literary spaciotemporality with the chronotope), Einstein had replaced Kant as Bakhtin's guiding intellectual paradigm. In advocating a relativistic model to explicate the literary world, Bakhtin aligned centuries of novelistic tradition with a distinctly modern worldview. His use of the epistemological possibilities inaugurated by twentieth-century physics allowed him to interpret centuries-old texts with an insightfulness available only to a post-Einsteinian reader.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 2 , March 2008 , pp. 405 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Holquist, Michael. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. . Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1979.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. “ literatura, 1975. 234–407.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. “ 1924–1925 : Pro et contra. Vol. 1. Ed. D. K. Burlakova. Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel'stvo Russkogo Xristianskogo gumanitarnogo instituta, 2001. 47–84.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Ed. and trans. Emerson, Caryl. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. . 4 vols. to date. Moskva: Russkie slovari, 1996–.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. “Speech Genres” and Other Late Essays. Ed. Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986.Google Scholar
Bloxincev, D. I. “3a .” Bo 1 (1952): 181–83.Google Scholar
Brandist, Craig. The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics. London: Pluto, 2002.Google Scholar
Brandist, Craig. “ 79 (2006): 56–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassirer [Kassirer], E. . Trans. E. S. Berlovič and I. Ja. Kolubovskij. Petrograd: Nauka i škola, 1922.Google Scholar
Clark, Katerina, and Holquist, Michael. “The Influence of Kant in the Early Work of M. M. Bakhtin.” Literary Theory and Criticism: Fetschrift Presented to René Wellek in Honor of His Eightieth Birthday. Vol. 1. Ed. Joseph Strelka. Bern: Lang, 1984. 299–313.Google Scholar
Clark, Katerina, and Holquist, Michael. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1974.Google Scholar
Egorov, B. F. “. 1st ed. Pt. 1. Sankt-Peterburg: Obrazovanie, 1991. 7–17.Google Scholar
Einstein, Albert. Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity: A Facsimile. New York: Braziller, 1996.Google Scholar
Emerson, Caryl. The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roger, Friedland, and Boden, Deirdre. “NowHere: An Introduction to Space, Time, and Modernity.” NowHere: Space, Time, and Modernity. Ed. Friedland, and Boden, . Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. 1–60.Google Scholar
Gasparov, M. L. “M. M. . Vol. 2. Moskva: Jazyki russkoj kul'tury, 1997. 494–96.Google Scholar
Graham, Loren. Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union. London: Lane, 1971.Google Scholar
Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Banesh. Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel. New York: New Amer. Lib., 1972.Google Scholar
Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. New York: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. “O . The Hague: Mouton, 1975. 8–34.Google Scholar
Kanaev, I. “ 1 (1926): 33–42; 2 (1926): 10-22.Google Scholar
Karpov, M. M. “O 1 (1951): 130–41.Google Scholar
Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Kolyskin, N. I., ed. Moskva: Izdatel'skaja gruppa “Progress,” 1996.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kursanov, K. A. “ 1 (1952): 169–74.Google Scholar
Lavrov, A. V. . Moskva: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1995.Google Scholar
Mark, Lipovetskij, and Sandomirskaja, Irina. “79 (2006): 7–38.Google Scholar
Markovich, V. “O 79 (2006): 39–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merkulov, V. L. “. 47.2 (1959): 204–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mihailovic, Alexandar. Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin's Theology of Discourse. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur I. Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905–1911). Reading: Addison, 1981.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur I. Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc. New York: Basic, 2001.Google Scholar
Morson, Gary Saul, and Emerson, Caryl. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990.Google Scholar
šternSerkovNaan, G. I. “ 2 (1951): 57–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anne, Nesbet, and Naiman, Eric. “ 2 (1993): 90–109.Google Scholar
Ryklin, Mikhail. “ I. Ed. D. Kujundžić and V. L. Makhlin. Moskva: Prometei, 1990. 60–76.Google Scholar
Scholz, Bernhard. “Bakhtin's Concept of ‘Chronotope’: The Kantian Connection.” The Contexts of Bakhtin: Philosophy, Authorship, Aesthetics. Ed. Shepherd, David. Amsterdam: Harwood Acad., 1998. 141–72.Google Scholar
Semkovskij, S. . Moskva: n.p., 1926.Google Scholar
Serkov, S. V. “ 1 (1926): 42–50; 2 (1926): 1-10.; 3 (1926): 1-8.Google Scholar
Shlain, Leonard. Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light. New York: Perennial, 1991.Google Scholar
Štern, V. “ 1 (1952): 175–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. N.p.: n.p., 1927.Google Scholar
Timirjazev, A. “ 2 (1921): 144–59.Google Scholar
Thomas, Vargish, and Mook, Delo. Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Zamjatin, Evgeni. . Voronež: E. A. Bolxovitinova, 2001.Google Scholar