Speech Genres and Other Late
Essays (University of Texas Press
Slavic Series, No 8) by M.M. Bakhtin
Review Of The Bildungsroman Book Fragment
. . . in many ways the best of Bakhtin. --New York Times Book Review
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays presents six short works from
Bakhtins Esthetics of Creative Discourse, published in Moscow in 1979.
This is the last of Bakhtins extant manuscripts published in the Soviet
Union. All but one of these essays (the one on the Bildungsroman) were
written in Bakhtins later years and thus they bear the stamp of a thinker
who has accumulated a huge storehouse of factual material, to which he
has devoted a lifetime of analysis, reflection, and reconsideration.
Personal Review: Speech Genres and Other Late Essays
(University of Texas Press Slavic Series, No 8) by M.M. Bakhtin
This Book, like almost everything Bakhtin wrote is profound and food for
thought. Unfortunately, and this is the drawback with some of the English
Language translations and compilations, it is also quite uneven, both in

subject matter and content. The Reader should not be deterred. It is worth
reading, because there are some fine insights buried in this book. --- I will
only write about the so called Bildungroman Fragment here. It has
become almost more legendary because of the fact that Bakhtin
supposedly used the only surviving manuscript for Cigarette Papers and
thus literally smoked his own work. However, any student of the
Bildungsroman will immediately comrpehend its use in Bakhtin's
reconstruction of the History of the Genre. Bakhtin begins with the origins
in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and traces the development to the
Classical Period of German Literature. Presumably, Goethes "Wilhelm
Meisters Lehrjahre" was to be the pinnacle of development, but this is a
part that is lost. What is important is that Bakhtin not only correctly names
the Novels of the Genre we all should know, by authors such as Wieland,
Herder, Keller etc., but he also names several very important Novels
which are usually forgotten, and have been branded as obscure or
eccentric by Critics and Scholars. I will name three: Theodor Gottlieb von
Hippel: "Lebensläufe in Aufstehender Linie", Johann Karl Wezel:
"Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts, des Weisen sonst der Stammler
genannt" and Jean Paul: "Titan". I would suggest that Bakhtin's Essay is
of importance because thanks to him these three Novels are being
rediscovered by todays' readers, they have entered the Discussion of
Literary of Criticism and have taken their place in the History of the
Bildungsroman, which they rightly deserve.
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