MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

CLS2830

Structuralism and semiotics: Bakhtin, Lotman

Proposed to be offered next in 1997

Millicent Vladiv-Glover

Synopsis 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 U P, 1981
• Lucid D P (ed.)Soviet semiotics: An anthology Johns Hopkins U P, 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 texts

• Genette G Narrative discourse (tr. J Lewin) Cornell U P, 1980
• Morson G S (ed.)Bakhtin: Essays and dialogues on his work U Chicago P, 1986
• Todorov Tz. Mikhail Bakhtin: The dialogical principle Manchester U P, 1984