Christianity in Bakhtin

An examination of the influence of Christianity on the thought and work of Mikhail Bakhtin.

This book examines the influence of Christianity on the thought and work of the great Russian theorist Mikhael Bakhtin. This is the first full-length work to approach Bakhtin from a religious perspective, and introduces the reader to a vitally important but hitherto ignored aspect of his work.The work of the great Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin has been examined from a wide variety of literary and theoretical perspectives. None of the many studies of Bakhtin begins to do justice, however, to the Christian dimension of his work. Christianity in Bakhtin for the first time fills this important gap. Having established the strong presence of a Christian framework in his early philosophical essays, Ruth Coates explores the way in which Christian motifs, though suppressed, continue to find expression in the work of Bakhtin's period of exile, and re-emerge in texts written during the time of his rehabilitation. Particular attention is paid to the themes of Creation, Fall, Incarnation and Christian love operating within metaphors of silence and exile, concepts which inform Bakhtin's world view as profoundly as they influence his biography.