Telnet to pmcmoo.org Bakhtin Discussion 6/8/97 (#259) [CS (the continuing saga) (#260) ]

Bakhtin Discussion 6/8/97

Summary of 6/8/97 discussion of Bakhtin's "Epic and Novel," _The Dialogic Imagination_ (stencil, Green Candle, Fortda, ~!@#, vira, and se'lavy present)

(waves, nods, lafs, jokes, asides, intruding guests, hugs, etc omitted--conversation somewhat rearranged so that replies come after statements, but the basic flow of discussion has been preserved)

starter.... about "the temporally valorized categories of absolute beginning and absolute end as important in our sense of time and the ideologies of past time, page 20. I'm quite interested in the novel... but also in the method that Bakhtin uses in this essay..."

se'lavy ask, "ah, how would you characterize his method?" technique... using a tin contrast with the temporal organization of the epic to highlight the evolving nature of the novel but while it valorizes, it is also a "Gay Science" in its analysis"

Green_Candle wonders if everyone agrees that the novel is the only 'developing' form and for that reason, easily valorized in the way that he does.

vira . o O ( I bet Bakhtin would have liked Babylon 5) characterizations. first I suppose is the straw man aspect of the epic--I think the Odyssey or the Iliad don't fit some of his characterization though I think other genres might suit the general gesture he is trying to make in distinguishing them"

Green_Candle thinks that his understanding of language and its relation to the novel (rather 'polyglossia') is fascinating, and is also fascinated by the idea that the novel is the only 'Alive' genre.

stencil [to se'lavy]: in what way? transforming their metier...er, genre... so there's a point of contention one could take w/B.

se'lavy say, "heroes are one dimensional, they are closed univocal worlds, they are closed off from us in an idealized past "

stencil says, "the assumption is not that they are not interesting as characters, but that they are completely exteriorized... always already complete..."

se'lavy say, "I find odysseus complex in the way B characterizes novel's protagonists--a mix of qualities--more than lots of protag's I could name"

stencil says, "he is still a hero without doubt though.. and each episode is in a sense separable from the whole...?"

se'lavy says, "all novels have protagonists that have doubt? I think Odysseus expresses doubt to athena. I don't think each episode is separable from the whole in the homeric epics"

Green_Candle [to se'lavy]: right. He argues though, that all works that fall into the genre of "epic" have done so (partially) because they did so in a world where 'monoglossia' reigned...that different languages didn't think themselves in relation to other languages.

se'lavy say, "I think both homeric epics are about contact with Others though the Odyssey suits that more than the Iliad. The Odyssey is about dealing with Others, about being Not at Home"

~!@#$%^&*()_+ [to se'lavy]: unless contact through disembowelment, etc, is the measure...

Green_Candle [to se'lavy]: so maybe limiting this 'otherness' to an 'otherness of language' is limited? Or reductive?

se'lavy say, "well, I guess I should bring up my probably more gut reaction. I was buying it when he said that there are poetics of the past, which I thought he meant as cultural moments, that see the genres as hierarchical and ordered, each functioning on their own and that the novel.

Green_Candle thought he was just arguing that there was something like an "absolute past" that was necessary to think the genre of the epic closed. That it was not a form that was still trying to find itself.

stencil says, "the development which bakhtin describes is about excess... where the main protagonist is either less than or more than their role... doubt being one of the possible effects of this relation"

FortDa teleports in. point... the separateness of the mythic past

Green_Candle says, "as distinct from a contemporary reality." coherent whole--and then the novel appeared and there was a poetics that was openended." se'lavy found that interesting--thinking he was arguing for an 18th century on sort of transformation. se'lavy say, "but then he goes on about all the ways greek lit is like the novel"

stencil says, "there is a distinction between the popular and high genres there"

se'lavy can buy tragedy or pindaric odes as genres that suit the argument

stencil says, "the novel emerges from the popular because of its contact with the present..."

~!@#$%^&*()_+ thinks 'rise of bourgeoisie'-->'market for literature changes'-->'V. Woolf's essay 'on the middlebrow'?

stencil gave lectures on carnival and marketplace in Tom Jones recently...

Green_Candle finds his characterization of the epic as lacking "artistic naivete" interesting...that somehow 'naivete' is a positive quality of the novel because of its contemporaneousness."

FortDa nods, the novel for B. exists "in a zone of contact with the incomplete events of a particular present

stencil says, "I take naivete as being about openness...the naive do not prejudge"

Green_Candle [to stencil]: He also points out the novel's ability to parody and satirize itself...

~!@#$%^&*()_+ [to stencil]: but circumstances do push them to choose

Green_Candle asks, "So maybe we might speak about laughter?" laughter"

~!@#$%^&*()_+ says, "...part and parcel of the temporal focus of the genre? between beginning and end?"

FortDa reviews B's summary, pp38-39 uncomfortable with how much I can't buy of what he says it rests on"

stencil says, "in later essays it doesn't rest on the literary form of the Epic so much as a contrast with all modes of singular serious forms of authority"

vira [to stencil]: exactly, so we shouldn't take this essay as a hard paradigm

~!@#$%^&*()_+ notes that the past/future dichotomies have been around a long time...

FortDa says, "p. 39, top in particular" object come close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact.... it draws an object to itself and makes it familiar... an investigative experiment (23)"

se'lavy ask, "so when is this moment? does it occur at anytime historically or is the novel the long wordy printed thing that appears circa 1700? (depending if you count Defoe or not)"

FortDa nods with stencil on this point, and in context of vira's comment: the novel by definition is going to resist definition, paradigms, etc

stencil [to vira]: yes... its just another merry experiment... ages, renaissance

se'lavy ask, "humanism?" works in a field that defines those words a particular way.

stencil thinks that formal temporal moments won't work because of the way in which laughter acts as a catalyst

FortDa thinks there's two things at issue here: the novel as genre and the sort of 'zone of crude contact' that the novel instantiates

se'lavy ask, "does B differentiate between the zone and the genre?"

Green_Candle thinks they intersect. sort of use of laughter as a catalyst"

Green_Candle says, "And this 'new' relationship to laughter is the catalyst."

stencil automatically inserts a history of the rise of capitalism into Bakhtin's story about the novel

se'lavy ask, "but does bakhtin?" that is opening up...which coincides with the emergence of the novel proper...a la the 18th century"

~!@#$%^&*()_+ ponders biology of laughter. both the novel and the zone of contact that it creates with the world (the latter appearing in bits in pieces in earli