Dostoevskyan prolegomena to a reapproach between Mikhail Bakhtin’s polyphony and dialectic

Abstract

Bakhtin analyzed Dostoevsky’s poetics not by a partial synthesis in terms of the speech of the writer or one of his characters, but through the dialogue that would leave its contingency to assume a structural role. However, Bakhtin could not demonstrate how Dostoevsky’s work would constitute an integral polyphonic totality. With the contribution from the critical theory, we will try to reapproach Bakhtin’s polyphony to the contradictory notion of totality through the dialectical method.