Vitalii L. Makhlin, DSc in Philosophy, PhD in Philology, Leading Researcher, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nakhimovsky Avenue, 51/21, 117418, Moscow, Russia. E-mail: vitmahlin@mail.ru
The traditional question about Bakhtin’s sources is dis-cussed here in a comparatively new methodological perspective. Starting with a certain quotation from his book on Rabelais, an attempt is made to approach the monograph from the two interrelated points of view. On the one hand, the subject of the book is the historicity of the novel by Rabelais and the Renais-sance. On the other hand, the concrete historical contexts of Bakhtin’s own 20th century historicity seems to be motivated by the the radical criticism of what Bakhtin called (in both editions of his Dostoevsky book) “the entire ideological culture of the new times”. Bakhtin was evidently an active (though “unofficial”) participant in this. In conclusion, the reception of the Rabelais book, since the 1960s, is analyzed against the background of still another kind of historicity, the so-called post modernity. Against the horizon of this kind of historicity, the reception of Bakhtin’s “Rabelais” (as well as his book on Dostoyevsky) has always had a tendency to get the better of the author; today it seems as if Bakhtin has already been “overcome”. But in reality the situation is quite different: the recent reception seems to be based on the notions and beliefs of the previous centuries that Bakhtin had put to question long before modernity and postmodernity.
authorship; historicity; the Renaissance; the New Times; the New thinking.
20.11.2025
12.12.2025
Makhlin, V.L. “Another Historicity. One Quotation from Bakhtin’s ‘Rabelais’ and Around It”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 1(71), 2026, pp. 36–48. (In Russ.)
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