Carnival and Chronotope: Bakhtin and Style Magazines

Abstract

Mikhail M. Bakhtin is gradually emerging as one of the leading theorists of the twentieth century, not only in literary circles, but wherever the fundamental nature of “literature” and “culture” is taken into question. Despite the checkered history of his own writing career and the impossible confusion of manuscripts and authorization,¹ Bakhtin is perhaps the most important and certainly the most radical writer of recent years to wholly rethink the concepts of style and genre in the light of a post-Saussurean linguistics.