Volume 5, Nº 1 (2023)

This article is epistemological in nature. It analyzes the concept of “context” in the works by M.M. Bakhtin “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creative Art” (1929) and “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics” (1963). The relevance of the chosen topic is largely due to the growing interest of linguists in the analyzed concept. Thus, the article highlights the theories of context developed in the interpretive semantics of François Rastier and in the critical discourse analysis of Thön van Dyck. In Bakhtin’s works mentioned above, notion of “context” is central; the thinker considers out-of-verbal and verbal context. At the same time, both contexts are mediated by artistic architectonics, form, vision or artistic will of the author.

Today dialogue-oriented educational theorists and practitioners are attracted to Bakhtin's notion of dialogue. In my article, I identify the five main features of Bakhtin's dialogue and consider what kind of educational mode is formed on its basis. The result of the article is a problematization of Bakhtin's dialogue and the educational practice associated with it.

Bakhtin draws the outlines of a rather flexible and integral interpretation of Pushkin's work. There are three main semantic knots in which Bakhtin comprehends Pushkin. The first one is based on the value-philosophical approach and is associated with the dialogical idea of interpenetration of personal value-ideological contexts and horizons of the author and characters. The second is devoted to novel poetics and prose. The third is related to the theory of carnival. Despite the frequent intention of illustrativeness in relation to the researcher's own philosophical and philological idea, Bakhtin's characteristics contribute a lot to our understanding of the organics of Pushkin's world. On the other hand, Pushkin's work acquires an illuminating significance for understanding Bakhtin's concepts. Bakhtin's Pushkin studies reveal with particular clarity the hermeneutic nature of Bakhtin's method: the interpretation of a text is born from the historically meaningful subjectivity of the interpreter. Let us call this subjectivity responsible: it is responsible insofar as it is marked by such features as the scale of thought and the depth of penetration into the subject. At the same time, this subjectivity is rooted in the organic, living movements of the event of being, in a specially interpreted hermeneutic pre-understanding-horizon.

The article introduces into scientific circulation oral memoirs about the wife of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Elena Aleksandrovna Bakhtina (nee Okolovich). The people who communicated with her in Saransk in 1945–1969 were interviewed by the authors in the 1980s – 2000s. Fragments of published memoirs of contemporaries about the Bakhtin spouses are also used. The results obtained allow us to clarify some details of Bakhtin’s biography, to get a more voluminous idea of his personality. The article continues a series of publications prepared on the basis of the memoirs of residents of Saransk and the Republic of Mordovia about Bakhtin.

In the article, the author presents a new monograph by professor N.I. Voronina, evaluating the polyphonic Bakhtin dialogue that the reader has with the main character of the book, with his time and, of course, with the city of Saransk, in which the thinker lived for a quarter of a century. The book presents first published memoirs and archival materials.