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| Mikhail Bakhtin’s Unique Interpretation of the Author’s Intention |
| Lie Fu |
| Hui Literature, Changji 831100, China |
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Abstract Interpreting the meaning of literary works always involves the important issue of how to view the author’s intention. Among different views of the hermeneutic community on this issue, Bakhtin’s perspective features both similarities and his own uniqueness, which also reflects his distinctive approach to literary hermeneutics. From the very beginning, Bakhtin has blazed a new trail in interpreting the different existences of the author’s intention in the text by starting from the heteroglossia and dialogism of the speaker’s words. For example, in Discourse in the Novel, by conducting an in-depth comparison of the discourse in poetry and novels, he clarifies from different levels that it is impossible for the novelist’s reference to things to not take into account the discourse of other relevant people. In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin gives his own comments despite dissenting views by starting from the unique interlingual relationship between Dostoevsky and his protagonists, thereby making a unique discovery that Dostoevsky has adopted a polyphonic approach different from monological novels to achieve his intention. When it comes to polyphonic novels, people often regard dialogism as a prominent feature of such novels. According to Bakhtin’s understanding, the dialogism in Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novels is mainly reflected in three discourse levels: first in the dialogue between the author and the characters, second in the dialogue between different characters, and third in the characters’ dialogue with themselves and others in the monologue. Bakhtin manages to give a detailed analysis of the latter two levels of dialogism with brilliant insights, yet he has never neglected the dialogism at the first level from beginning to the end. If Tolstoy’s intention is mainly expressed by means of the completed narrative discourse in his monological novels, with the author-narrator voice always dominating in the novel discourse, Bakhtin finds that Dostoevsky likes to secretly internalize the author’s intention on the characters and turn it into one of the voices depicted in the novel. It is with this method that the author outside the story can have a transboundary dialogue with the characters, thereby turning the author’s voice from “back-to-back” to “face-to-face” with the character, which also contributes a full “dialogical expressiveness” to the author’s ultimate intention in the polyphonic novel. The reason why so many commentators are used to interpreting the author’s intention in the novel by monologue, and why such interpretation has its own explanatory power, is that most of the previous novels are originally monological novels. In Bakhtin’s view, only from Dostoevsky did authors start to break away from the solid framework of monological novels where the author’s voice is always higher than that of the character, and to create polyphonic novels where the author and the characters can talk on an equal basis. Whether Bakhtin’s interpretation fits the reality of Dostoevsky’s works is definitely an academic issue worthy of continuous contention, yet his unique interpretation itself represents his unique vision on the author’s intention, and opens up a brand-new perspective in the interpretation history of the author’s intention.
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Received: 28 February 2020
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2021, Vol. 51 
