![]() In the polyphonic novel, the voices are "unmerged": they "cannot be contained within a single consciousness, as in monologism. ![]() The "open-ended dialogue" is the verbal manifestation of this truth, and polyphony is its artistic representation in literary form. In his conception, unknown and unforeseen possibilities arise out of the interaction of autonomous, unfinalized consciousnesses, and this is the true, lived nature of human existence. In contrast to this model of truth, Bakhtin postulates a truth that requires a multiplicity of consciousnesses, something that cannot be contained within a single consciousness rather it comes into existence at the point of contact between diverse consciousnesses, and is intrinsically "full of event potential." Bakhtin's criticism of the monologic conception of truth is that it abstracts and effaces the "eventness" of the event – everything about it that makes it unique, unfinalizable and full of unrealized potential. True judgments are not attached to a personality but correspond to some unified, systematically monologic context. The advocate of such a system "has only one principle of cognitive individualization: error. Even if such a system is produced collectively, it is expressed and comprehended in the form of a single consciousness, potentially utterable by anyone, but always the same. In philosophy and science, such 'separate thoughts' are generally formed with a view toward monologic systematisation of truth, which will be similarly "'no-man's'". As such it doesn't matter who utters it: it is an abstraction that has the same relationship to truth regardless of who utters it. The truth of a proposition is determined solely by reference to its accuracy or inaccuracy relative to its object. The monologic truth is a disembodied truth, or what Bakhtin calls "'no-man's' thoughts". In the monologic conception of truth, the "truth" or "falsehood" of a thought/assertion/proposition exists independently of the person who utters it. Dostoevsky's novels, according to Bakhtin, cannot be understood from within the monological tradition of western thought, a way of thinking about 'truth' that has dominated religion, science, philosophy and literature for many centuries. ![]() The dialogic sense of truth, as it manifests in Dostoevsky, is a radically different way of understanding the world to that of the monologic. Polyphony in literature is the consequence of a dialogic sense of truth in combination with the special authorial position that makes possible the realization of that sense on the page. ![]() His major characters are, "by the very nature of his creative design, not only objects of authorial discourse but also subjects of their own directly signifying discourse." According to Bakhtin, the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky's novels is " a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices". Caryl Emerson describes it as "a decentered authorial stance that grants validity to all voices." The concept was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin, using a metaphor based on the musical term polyphony.īakhtin's primary example of polyphony was Fyodor Dostoevsky's prose. In literature, polyphony ( Russian: полифония) is a feature of narrative, which includes a diversity of simultaneous points of view and voices. Simultaneity of points of view and voices within a particular narrative plane
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