A Bakhtinian view of the development of the novelistic genre in India
pp. 143-156
in: Lakshmi Bandlamudi, E. V. Ramakrishnan (eds), Bakhtinian explorations of Indian culture, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
This chapter seeks to draw a parallel between the conditions responsible for the emergence of the novel as a genre in Europe, as explained mainly in Bakhtin's article "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse" and also his other work, and the absence of those conditions in India. Almost contradictory social conditions shaped our entire culture and were shaped by the culture in return, making us straightforward (in the Bakhtinian sense) and monological. In India, the novel as a genre made its appearance in vernaculars only after the English language had found a stable footing among the elite in India. English was a language which was not encumbered by semantic lexical elements such as the use of honorific pronouns which made piety an inseparable aspect of our social behavior. This affects the possibility of travesty, parody, and the carnival which, according to Bakhtin, are essential conditions for the novel to come into existence. The chapter aims to give serious consideration to Bakhtin's contention that a complete transformation in our ideas about the world can occur only under the condition of "thoroughgoing polyglossia and dialogism."
