Bakhtin and the Teaching of Literature
2007; Routledge; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1943-2348
Autores Tópico(s)Narrative Theory and Analysis
ResumoMy students tell me that I teach novels differently from their other professors. The comment on student evaluation forms I get most frequently is one that some colleagues cite with admiration, but often tinged with irony. Students assert that in reading Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or George Eliot, they have learned something that will make a difference in their lives. How can I be so unprofessional? Of course, Russian novels - think of The Death of Ivan Ilych - insist especially strongly that to read them for any reason other than to live more wisely is to misread them. Even the most famous Russian comedy, Gogol's The Government Inspector, has the mayor turn to the audience in the last scene and say: Who are you laughing at? Laugh at yourselves! (1980, pp. 128- 129). With such a canon to teach, Russian professors have an advantage in making literature relevant. Bakhtin inherited the moral urgency of Russian literature and turned it into a theory.1 In his first published essay, Bakhtin outlined the convictions that were to inform his life's work:
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