Mikhail Bakhtin

Rating:
Summary: Solid Lterary Biography
Review: This is the only Biography of Mikhail Bakhtin available in English. Published in 1984, it is now outdated, but it is still worth reading for those interested in Bakhtin and his work. The Biography more or less follows the chronological order of his life, and therefore is helpful in placing his work in a particular time. This is important because the English Translations, especially the Essay compilations, "Dialogic Imagination" and "Speech Genres and other Late Essays", tend to mix work from diferent periods in his life. Bakhtin's thought changed and developed in his life, and this Biography helps make sense of this. Actual details and anecdotes of Bakhtin's life, that help putting a "man behind the work", are disappointingly scant. The reader will not learn much about what Bakhtin actually did outside his work in this Literary Biography. Most of all, I would have been interested in his reading likes, as well as dislikes, and his opinions of Authors and Literary Theorists. Otherwise, this Biogrpahy is well written and researched, but now out of date. For Bakhtin studies a new Biography is neded, and even more importantly a Critical Edition of his work.