The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)

What made Bakhtin worth quoting on laughter as a form of cognition in a closeness that is inside out, upside down, and dismembers what we have become used to is contained in Epic and Novel, the first essay in this book. I quote:Of special significance in this process of demolishing distance is the comical origin of these genres: they derive from folklore (popular laughter). It is precisely laughter that destroys the epic, and in general destroys any hierarchical (distancing and valorized) distance. As a distanced image a subject cannot be comical; it must be brought close. Everything that makes us laugh is close at hand, all comical creativity works in a zone of maximal proximity. Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from above and below, break open its external shell, look into its center, doubt it, take it apart, dismember it, lay it bare and expose it, examine it freely and experiment with it. Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object, before a world, making of it an object of familiar contact and thus clearing the ground for an absolutely free investigation of it. Laughter is a vital factor in laying down that prerequisite for fearlessness without which it would be impossible to approach the world realistically. As it draws an object to itself and makes it familiar, laughter delivers the object into the fearless hands of investigative experiment--both scientific and artistic--and into the hands of free experimental fantasy. Familiarization of the world through laughter and popular speech is an extremely important and indispensable step in making possible free, scientifically knowable and artistically realistic creativity in European civilization. (p. 23).

Amazed at the themes and depth into which we get swallowed in these texts. A learned and precise translation. Super recommended to everybody.

I wish amazon had a separate place to submit Kindle reviews, or those reviews just about the operation of the Kindle for a specific book.Until then, I want to add that this book does not allow for chapter searches. I needed the last chapter, and I had to click "Search This Book," then type in the name of the chapter ("Discourse in the Novel"), and then weed through 14 pages of citations to find the place I was looking for.Until this book becomes more Kindle-friendly, I'd recommend buying the paper version.

I found it inciteful, but I wouldn't get super excited. People get too excited about this guy.

Underlining in one or two places but very insignificant, the book hardly shows any shelf ware, excellent to hold and read.I use it for my research work. Thank you!

This is one of those 'must-have' reads if you are interested in the social sciences, rhetoric, politics or literature.

Bakhtin's discussion of the dialogic imagination helped me understand why I preferred writers like George V. Higgins to other practitioners of genre fiction. He lucidly explains how dialog, in the broadest sense of the words and speech patterns that a speaker uses, give insights into cultural background, economic status, geographical origins and personal history -- all the things that go to the creation of credible characters.

A theoretically challenging text. I recommend it for students of literature, as well as students of education.

thank you

I love this book. Ideal study aid for Masters or undergraduate Englishave studies.

Not an easy read but very useful if doing an English MA. Used his theory of hybridity in my essay on Jane Eyre.

The book is worth a keep and read!