The Relationship Between Bakhtin's Polyohonic Novel Theory And Polyphonic Theory Of Music

Mikha?l Bakhtin enjoys a high prestige in the area of modern literary criticism worldwide. His critic talents were reflected in his review on the novels of Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist in the 19 th century. Through in——depth analysis of Dostoyevsky's novels, Bakhtin holds the view that the predominating feature of Dostoyevsky's novels is the so——called polyphony. From the word "polyphony", we can see that the polyphonic theory in the history of western music is the important origin of Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory. Many notions in Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory, such as “polyphony”, “double——voicedness”, “dialogism” “equality” are closely related to both the polyphonic music theory and the laws of art embodied in these concepts. This paper aims to take polyphonic music theory and polyphonic music history as a new point of view,via comparative analysis, to explore the ideological connotation of Bakhtin's “dialogism” within his polyphonic novel theory.This paper consists of four sections. The first chapter is the general introduction of Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory. Through reviewing major achievements and approaches of domestic research of the subject, it summarizes main ideas and methods of current research, and points out their drawbacks. After that, the paper takes the conception of music into consideration. Via the perspective of polyphonic composing theory, the paper illustrates Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory and analyses the characteristics of the theory and the sources of the idea.In the second chapter, the author mainly explores the relationship between the theory of polyphonic novel and polyphonic music. Through comparison between the text of literature and music, I analyze the relationship between the basic connotation of polyphonic novel theory in defining the theoretical characteristics and the counterpoint music,as well as the relationship between "dual voiced discourse" ——the basic concept of polyphonic novel theory and the counterpoint music. So on the micro level, the relation between polyphonic novel theory and the theory of polyphony is established.In the third chapters, from the perspective of the theory of "carnival", the author analyzes the relationship between the theory of polyphonic novel and polyphonic music. Applied to theoretical construction of his polyphonic novel, the carnival theory, as a kind of methodology in Bakhtin's philosophy, sheds light on the "carnival" of literature.The author thinks that the "carnival" thought of literature which is included in the field of the polyphonic novel theory, is filled with all sorts of influences from the polyphonic composition theory. In the process of carnivalizing literature,the "carnivalization" of dialogue is the most fundamental way, since language is the artistic symbol of literature. Thus, in this part, I also discussed the relationship between Bakhtin's heteroglossia theory and the polyphonic novel theory,because the heteroglossia is an important source of dual voiced discourse.The last part of this paper is the appendix and conclusion. The appendix is a new form of literary theory that I propose on basis of the comparative study between Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory and polyphony theory of music. This can be used to analyze the novel Notes from Underground written by Dostoevsky.In the appendix, I try to prove the connection between Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory and the counterpoint music through text analysis, and the objectivity of the characteristics of polyphony thinking. I define the textual feature of "Notes from the Underground" as Fugue autobiographical novel. In the conclusion, I summarized the approach of this paper and proposed some new ideas on the future studies of Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory with this approach.