Mikhail Bakhtin’s Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Psychology

This book provides a categorical examination of Bakhtinian thought as it originates in the humanities and social sciences. International in scope and constructed according to multidisciplinary epistemologies, the volume “articulate[s] the enduring relevance and heritage of the great and varied works of Bakhtin,” to quote from the editors' introduction. The volume is divided into three parts, each dealing with one of the three broad areas specified in the title. The longest and most notable is the first part, "Bakhtin’s Heritage in Literature," in which both editors provide the foundational concepts of that heritage (i.e., Bakhtin’s idiosyncratic theorizing of the novel, with Cervantes functioning as a corresponding influence). Part 2 examines Bakhtin’s heritage in philosophy and in film and acting, and part 3 addresses the Bakhtin tradition within the psychology of mind and discourse. Though other works—such as Deborah Haynes’s Bakhtin Reframed (2013) and Michael Holquists’s Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (CH, Apr'91, 28-4340)—are comparable in terms of the themes they take on, Gratchev and Mancing's is the first volume in which multiple scholars in various fields and from an array of cultures provide unfettered analysis of the lineage of Bakhtin’s theories.



Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. * CHOICE *
A wonderful collection of essays that connects the traditional Bakhtin of philology, social ethics, and grotesque realism with more recent themes: quixotic films, a poet’s monologism, the moving body. Global in scope, it celebrates that larger, more multi-voiced and fearless world that Bakhtin himself dreamed of but never knew. -- Caryl Emerson, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University

This fascinating volume successfully demonstrates the growing influence of Mikhail Bakhtin across diverse disciplines, featuring scholarship in narratology, poetics, film, popular culture, psychology, philosophy, disability studies as well as from a variety of literary traditions. Moreover, it exemplifies Bakhtin’s global impact, including scholars from Europe, Eastern Europe, the Americas, and Asia who take up topics that are just as geographically diverse. Its robust global and comparative focus signals the power of Bakhtin’s ideas to continue to inspire creative, new applications that will change how we understand the arts, ourselves, and the world.

-- Scott Pollard, Christopher Newport University

In the 80s, rediscovering Bakhtin led criticism out of the post-structuralist 'wilderness.' Now Gratchev and Mancing’s wide-ranging volume rescues us from the crisis in the humanities with a roadmap for deep interdisciplinarity that crisscrosses literature, other arts, philosophy, and psychology. While mirroring Bakhtin’s breadth, this collection finds its underlying leitmotif in his spiritual twin, Miguel de Cervantes. Bravo!

-- William Childers, Brooklyn College