This work investigates the role of religious thought in shaping and framing Bakhtin's writings. The authors explore Bakhtin's idea of faith - an abstract codification of a belief system - and a feeling for faith which involves the active participation of persons, both human and divine.

Among Western critics, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) needs no introduction. His name has been invoked in literary and cultural studies across the ideological spectrum, from old-fashioned humanist to structuralist to postmodernist. In this candid assessment of his place in Russian and Western thought, Caryl Emerson brings to light what might be unfamiliar to the non-Russian reader: Bakhtin's foundational ideas, forged in the early revolutionary years, yet hardly altered in his lifetime. With the collapse of the Soviet system, a truer sense of Bakhtin's contribution may now be judged in the context of its origins and its contemporary Russian "reclamation." A foremost Bakhtin authority, Caryl Emerson mines extensive Russian sources to explore Bakhtin's reception in Russia, from his earliest publication in 1929 until his death, and his posthumous rediscovery. After a reception-history of Bakhtin's published work, she examines the role of his ideas in the post-Stalinist revival of the Russian literary profession, concentrating on the most provocative rethinkings of three major concepts in his world: dialogue and polyphony; carnival; and "outsideness," a position Bakhtin considered essential to both ethics and aesthetics. Finally, she speculates on the future of Bakhtin's method, which was much more than a tool of criticism: it will "tell you how to teach, write, live, talk, think."

Bakhtin and the Human Sciences demonstrates the abundance of ideas Bakhtin′s thought offers to the human sciences, and reconsiders him as a social thinker, not just a literary theorist. The contributors hail from many disciplines and their essays′ implications extend into other fields in the human sciences. The volume emphasizes Bakhtin′s work on dialogue, carnival, ethics and everyday life, as well as the relationship between Bakhtin′s ideas and those of other important social theorists. In a lively introduction Gardiner and Bell discuss Bakhtin′s significance as a major intellectual figure and situate his ideas within current trends and developments in social theory.

"Though the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) has been widely appropriated in the various humanities and social science fields, his thought has not yet been widely utilized in biblical studies. This book presents both the wide-ranging elements of his complex thought and also sketches the context of the life from which it emerged. It also offers access to the conversation going on in circles beyond the study of religion, specifically philosophy, anthropology, and literary studies." "Bakhtin's interest in matters specifically literary as well as more broadly cultural make him a theorist helpful to biblical scholars seeking to renegotiate the sometimes disparate realms of language and history. Bakhtin's careful attention to details of language shared by narrator and characters as well as his far-reaching sense of what happens when language is reused repeatedly within the tradition make his ideas stimulating within the vortex of current biblical discourse. His insistence that the multiplicity of voices decenters control from any single speaking or interpreting position challenges a number of positions in theology and hermeneutics, while his sense that the author does not disappear from the work of art challenges recent suppositions of language theory and linguistics."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book examines the significance of religion in the work of the twentieth century philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. Exploring Bakhtin’s contribution to debates on methodology in the study of religion, this book argues that his use of religious terminology is derived from his source material in philosophy of religion and not from his confessional commitment to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Critiquing Gavin Flood’s important work Beyond Phenomenology, Hilary Bagshaw explains how Bakhtin’s work on ’outsideness’ presents invaluable insights for scholars of religion, particularly pertinent to the contemporary insider/outsider debate.

This text explores Mikhail Bakhtin's reliance on the terms and concepts of theology. It begins with an identification of the theological categories and terms recalling Christology in general and Trinitarianism in particular that emerge throughout Bakhtin's long and varied career. Alexander Mihailovic discusses the elaborately wrought subtextual imagery, wordplay, and palpable orality of Bakhtin's theology of discourse, and explores the role that theology plays in supporting Bakhtin's ideas about the anti-hierarchical drift of language and culture.

A comprehensive collection exploring the role of ideas, institutions, and movements in the evolution of Russian religious thought, Contains cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of one of the richest aspects of Russian cultural and intellectual life, Considers the influence of Russian religious thought in the West and the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art, film, and the novel, An authoritative reference for students and scholars Book jacket.

An examination of Russia's philosophical heritage. It extends from the Slavophiles to the philosophers of the Silver Age, from emigre religious thinkers to Losev and Bakhtin and assesses the meaning for Russian culture as a whole.

"If Bakhtin is right," Wayne C. Booth has said, "a very great deal of what we western critics have spent our time on is mistaken, or trivial, or both." In Literature and Spirit David Patterson proceeds from the premise that Bakhtin is right. Exploring Bakhtin's notions of spirit, responsibility, and dialogue, Patterson takes his reader from the narrow arena of literary criticism to the larger realm of human living and human loving. True to the spirit of Bakhtin, he draws the Russian into a vibrant dialogue with other thinkers, including Foucault, Berdyaev, Gide, Lacan, Levinas, and Heidegger. But he does not stop there. He engages Bakhtin in his own insightful and unique dialogue, meeting the responsibility and taking the risk summoned by dialogue. Literature and Spirit, therefore, is not a typically cool and detached exercise in academic curiosity. Instead, it is a passionate and penetrating endeavor to respond to literature and spirit as the links in life's attachment to life. The author demonstrates that in deciding something about literature, we decide something about the substance and meaning of our lives. Far from being a question of commentary or explication, he argues, our relation to literature is a matter of spiritual life and death. The reader who comes before a literary text encounters the human voice. And Patterson enables his reader to hear that voice in all its spiritual dimensions. Unique in its questions and in its quest, Literature and Spirit addresses an audience that goes beyond the ordinary academic categories. It appeals not only to students of literature, philosophy, and religion, but to anyone who seeks an understanding of spiritual presence and meaning in life. Through his affirmation of what is dear, Patterson responds to the needful question. And in his response he puts the question to his audience: Where are you? Literature and Spirit thus speaks to those who face the task of answering, "Here I am."

This classic work by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) examines popular humor and folk culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One of the essential texts of a theorist who is rapidly becoming a major reference in contemporary thought, Rabelais and His World is essential reading for anyone interested in problems of language and text and in cultural interpretation.