Unlike the epic, the novel happily incorporates other genres, and thrives on a diversity of worldviews and ways of speaking about the world. The epic takes place in an absolute past and speaks in an absolute language: the novel expresses the non-coincidence between hero and environment, and as such becomes an artistic medium for the genuinely new (novel) вЂ“ in dialogue, temporal development and consciousness. The epic expresses a unity of worldview that does not permit the development of an alienated interiority of the soul, or indeed any form of behaviour, interpretation or language that is at variance with it. The essential difference lies in what Emerson, following Lukacs, refers to as 'the gap between self and society'. In this essay, Bakhtin identifies the distinguishing features of the novel as a genre by contrasting it with the epic. The editors provide an introduction placing the essays within the context of Bakhtin's conception of language, and a glossary explaining his extensive and idiosyncratic technical vocabulary. The essays are: ' Epic and Novel' (1941) 'From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse' (1940) 'Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel' (1937вЂ“38) 'Discourse in the Novel' (1934). Holquist and Emerson arranged the essays according to their relative complexity, from the simplest to the most difficult, rather than chronologically. Problems of Literature and Aesthetics was published in 1975 and The Dialogic Imagination in 1981, but Bakhtin actually wrote the essays forty years earlier. 1.3 Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.1.2 From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse.According to John Sturrock, for Bakhtin the novel is 'the most complete and the most democratic of genres, coming as close as it is possible for an artform to come to capturing the multiplicity, richness and zest of life itself.' Language, in Bakhtin's view, is inherently dialogic, and the novel is the literary genre that has the greatest capacity to artistically represent this reality. In this sense novelistic discourse undermines absolute or authoritative (monologic) language, which is revealed to be merely one form of ideological expression operating within an essentially intersubjective medium. The novel, unlike other literary forms, embraces heterogeneity in discourse and meaning: it re-creates a reality that is based on the interactions of a variety of subjective consciousnesses and ways of thinking and speaking about the world. The title refers to the central place of the concept of dialogue in Bakhtin's theory of the novel. According to Holquist, the unifying theme of the essays is 'the novel and its relation to language.'

Holquist and Emerson chose the essays from a collection of six essays by Bakhtin published in Moscow under the title Р’РѕРїСЂРѕСЃС‹ Р»РёС‚РµСЂР°С‚СѓСЂС‹ Рё РµСЃС‚РµС‚РёТЎРё ( Voprosy literatury i estetiki Problems of Literature and Aesthetics). It was edited and translated into English by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson, who gave the work its English title. Bakhtin) is a book on the nature and development of novelistic prose, comprising four essays by the twentieth century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination (full title: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.

Bakhtin chronotope dialogic imagination