Structuralism and semiotics: Bakhtin, Lotman
Millicent Vladiv-Glover
8 points * 2 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton
The subject will be a study of cultural and literary theory through the texts of the Bakhtin circle and the Tartu School of Yuri Lotman. There will be an emphasis on genre theory and problems such as chronotope in the novel and cultural diaglossia. The subject will be taught against a background of parallel themes in the contemporary international critical debate.
Assessment
One essay (3000 words): 50% * One class paper (2000 words): 30% * Class test (1 hour): 20%
Prescribed texts
Bakhtin M The problems of Dostoevsky's poetics Ardis, 1993
Bakhtin M The dialogic imagination Texas UP, 1981
Lucid D P (ed.) Soviet semiotics: An anthology Johns Hopkins UP, 1977
Lotman Yu M Analysis of the poetic text (tr. D B Johnson) Ardis, 1976
Uspensky B A The poetics of composition: The structure of the artistic text and typology of compositional form U California P, 1973
Recommended reading
Genette G Narrative discourse (tr. J Lewin) Cornell UP, 1980
Morson G S (ed.) Bakhtin: Essays and dialogues on his work U Chicago P, 1986
Todorov Tz. Mikhail Bakhtin: The dialogical principle Manchester UP, 1984