Filistovitch Alena

Fall 2000

Course Paper

Dr. H. Maragou

“… there can be neither a first nor a last meaning; [anything that can be understood] always

exists among other meanings as a link in the chain of meaning, which in its totality is the

only thing that can be real. In historical life this chain continues infinitely, and therefore each

individual link in it is renewed again and again, as though it were being reborn.”

Thoughts like these have led many theorists to consider Bakhtin as one of
the greatest theoreticians of language and literature in the twentieth
century. Bakhtin’s view that language is a social phenomenon
characterised by openness and and involved in an ever-evolving process
provides a counteractive pole in theories like deconstruction, which saw
communication as virtually impossible. What is more important for
students of literature is that Bakhtin applied his views on language not on
strictly political field but on literary texts. This stems from his belief that
literature can indirectly disrupt authority and liberate alternative voices. In
addition, he believed that it was the novel which embodied this liberating
openness of social discourse.
However, in order to appreciate the application of his views on
literarary texts and especially on the novel, it is essential to understand
the main tenets of his philosophy of language. Bakhtin and the so called
Bakhtin School, which arose in the later period of Russian Formalism, was
not interested in abstract linguistics of the kind which later formed the
basis of structuralism. He was mainly concerned with language or
discourse as a social phenomenon. For Bakhtin verbal signs are active and
dynamic capable of acquiring different meanings and connotations
depending on the social and historic context. Moreover, these verbal signs
are involved in a class struggle characterised by the presence of
centripetal and centrifugal forces in the language. The centripetal forces,
which represent the ruling layers of society, try to impose a unitary
language in its effort to enforce conformity to the main ideological notions
of the given time. The centrifugal forces, however, are the ones which try
to resist this providing alternative discourses which strive for diversity. This
multiplicity of languages points to Bakhtin’s fundamental concept of
heteroglossia according to which all meaning depends on the context
where utterances interact with each other.
Bakhtin developed the implications of this dynamic view of language on
literarary texts and reached the conclusion that the novel is the only genre
which can fully embody the above features and is able to subvert authority
and liberate alternative voices. The novel, according to Bakhtin is
characterised by a diversity of individual voices, which ideally should
represent the internal stratificaction of the language at the particular
moment, and which are involved in dialogisation. This multiplicity of voices
becomes apparent if we think that the basic unities of novelistic discourse,
according to Bakhtin, involve the authorial narration, the individualised
speech of the characters, which can be represented in a variety of ways,
the semiliterary written everyday narration in the form of letters and
diaries, and various forms of literary but extra-novelistic discourse such as
philosophy, sociology and so on. More importantly, if the novel is to be
successful, the author should not speak in any given language but through
language avoiding imposing his own voice on the novel destroying thus
heteroglossia.
Contrasting novelistic discourse to poetic discourse he claims that the
unity of the language system adopted by the poet and the poet’s
individuality, which are indispensable prerequisites of the poetic style, are
not conducive to diversity. This fundamental difference between the two
discourses led different scholars like Sphet to dismiss the novel from the
realm of artistic creation because it “does not spring from poetic
creativity” but it consists of “purely rhetorical devides”. In contrast,
Bakhtin stresses the fact that it was the novel’s interaction with the
existing rhetorical genres (journalism, philosophy, etc.) that enabled it to
acquire its uniqueness. For Bakhtin, the novel is the product of
decentralising, centrifugal linguistic forces that make it not fit into the
frame provided by the stylistics of poetic discourse.
Another important aspect of his work, connected to the concept of
heteroglossia, is the importance he lay on the novel’s interaction with with
low-life verbal discourse such as found in local fairs, carnivals and the
square, and genres like the fabliaux which provided opportunities for
mocking authority. This liberating and often subversive use of various
dialogic forms, explored in his other books Problems of Dostoevsky’s
Poetics, and mainly Rabelais and his World, became especially dominant
in the Renaissance but it can be traced in earlier literary forms like the the
Socratic dialogue and the Menipean Satire.
If we try to see how Bakhtin’s theory can be practically applied we can
resort to Renaissance comedies like Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night where
there is the clash between Malvolio, who represents prudence and
decorum, and Sir Toby Belch, who embodies the festive, carnival spirit and
mocks the dominant social conventions supported by Malvolio. There is,
for example a scene where Malvolio scolds Sir Toby, Sir Andrew Aguecheek
and Maria for having fun and Sir Toby answers back by saying “Dost thou
think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
Sir Toby’s disrespect for conventional norms is feature which Bakhtin
believes has been adopted by novelistic discourse.
Another example, which clearly displays how the author can promote
heteroglossia through the use of different kinds of discourse even while
narrating, is James Joyce’s modernist classic novel Ulysees. In a paragraph
where the central character, Leopold Bloom, has invited the other main
character for tea after an adventurous night at a brothel Joyce narrates it
using a multiplicity of styles:

What did Bloom do?

He ... drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen with
its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary, knelt on one
knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks and various
coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram coal at twenty one
shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and M’Donald of 14 D’Olier
street, kindled it at three projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer
match, thereby releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing
its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of
the air.

In just one paragraph the narrator employs the language of catechism

used in Christian teaching, descriptive prose typical of a realist novel,
technical description, and the language of commerce found in
advertisements. By adopting language from different social discourses,
Joyce shows how every event can be seen from multiple perspectives and
described in a variety of ways, thus undermining the concept of unitary
language.
A novel which exemplifies Bakhtin’s concept of polyphonic heteroglossia
is Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Firstly, the