Monash University Arts Undergraduate Handbook, 1997

CLS2830/3830

Structuralism and semiotics: Bakhtin, Lotman

Millicent Vladiv-Glover

8 points
* 2 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton

Objectives On completion of the subject students should have become familiar with the basic texts of the two Russian semioticians in a general historical context of the 1930s-1960s. They should have acquired a critical vocabulary pertaining to the semiotic discourse and should be able to implement the two modelling systems to the analysis of cultural texts.

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 second year One essay (3000 words): 50%
* One class paper (2000 words): 30%
* Class test (1 hour): 20%

Assessment third year One essay (3000 words): 50%
* One class paper (2000 words): 30%
* Class test (1 hour): 20%
* Third-year level students will write essays which require more theoretical reflection and presuppose a wider reading than essays written by students enrolled at second-year level.

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

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