To ask if anyone has read (and understood) Bakhtin's Discourse In The Novel, please?

[FrothyDragon]

Because I'm literally tearing my hair out trying to understand the part (not a chapter, can't think what I'd call it) comparing Discourse In The Novel and Discourse In Poetry...

I'm suddenly feeling too stupid for my degree...

:(

We all have moments like that - I have a PhD and still often encounter texts relevant to my field that I have issues understanding. Sometimes it helps to treat it like learning a foreign language, you need to pick through it slowly at first but it'll get easier. Afraid I can't help with that particular text, but let me know if you ever want to talk about the author's ideas on carnivalesque...

Thank you, Quacks. If they throw him at us next year, I'll fucking scream... I'm sure it's a great big wind up essay, but still.

Will probably end up coming back to it. But need this finished by Monday. :( Not sure it'll happen at this rate...

I read it a hundred years ago - pretty sure I understood nothing and just pinched a quote or two to bung in an essay. I got a 2:1 by the way :)

Bakhtin is hard going. I just had to write an essay on barthes. Its english lit so why always stuck with badly translated non english crit. Argh. Are you doing critical methods? Sorry.. Its cool to find other students. If you get desperate, type out the passage on here and I'll try help. Good luck. Also be happy its not Derrida. That is chronic

Thank you, Sesameflower. Am going to give the next piece a go, and may take you up on your offer. This essay is a weird one. We need to translate a text into a different type of text (in my case, poetry to prose) then explain what the hell we've done... We've got a Barthes chapter or two to read and digest as well. Right now, Barthes, Ong and Bakhtin should be considering themselves lucky there's no email in the afterlife...

YY, can you type/link to the passage in question? I might have it knocking about somewhere, actually...

It's a long one, hang on...

OK, this is the best link I can find for it atm, but the passage we've been provided is pp 275 - 301. This one goes up to 296, then picks up at 324.www.public.iastate.edu/~carlos/607/readings/bakhtin.pdf So, any help on any aspect up to 296 would be very much appreciated, thank you. :)

Bakhtin is easier than Barthes. So he is talking about the construction of meaning to words and subsequently what attributes of meaning are formed.

Word meaning is determined through dialogue.
The history and social status of the speaker affect the meaning of a word.
Family jargon or slang affect what a word comes to mean.

So to turn your poetry to prose you should consult the history of the word in the OED and consider the social stance of the speaker.

Each word in a poem is painstakingly placed according to what the poet perceives as its meaning. Use a theasurus to re place the word into the context of dialogue.

Only up to page 289

Ok
so he is basically saying language and word come out of dialogue.
That the speaker belonging to a social group, class, profession, social order will own or have their own words grammer syntax which culminate in semantics or groups of words or a way of talking.

So basically posh people and not posh people talk different. When juxtaposed or place next to one another the difference in the way they talk exposes the different identity of the speaker and subsequent social group.
Its confusing because bakhtin is breaking it down to the bare bones that make up a body of prose so syntax semantics juxtaposed are all jargon. Jargon is jargon to. I think use a dictionary to seperate what he says into the semantic fields and reach what he is convuluting.
Sorry if that makes it worse. Hope it helps

Sesame, that's helpful. Thank you! :)

sesameflower: "The history and social status of the speaker affect the meaning of a word.
Family jargon or slang affect what a word comes to mean"

And if you wanted to an example to demonstrate that, see the Mumsnet threads on fanny and twat:-)

Not sure I can reference Mumsnet in the bibliography...

Good luck with the essay. What poem are you using? I quite like the Bakhtin. I think I'll use that next year. We're doing "the novel" ( cue thunder clap and me crying about having to read Jane Eyre for the 20th time. I think Rochester is a total git)
hackmum, I agree. Mumsnet gives and gives.

Very pleased I didn't do English lit degree as this Bakhtin chap is waaay over my head (theough sesame you did a great explanation).

I did French Lit, though (feels sick at remembering Proust in orginal).

Oh crikey... Proust in his original? I've also got his translated "In Search Of Lost Time" in this dossier. My English course co-ordinator hated us all. Only explanation for it...

Sesame, I've got the first two parts of TS Eliot's "Preludes" to translate. Fun. Am contemplating gouging out eyeballs.

I read the wastelands once. Chronic. Preludes not so bad. Put it in a past tense and if you want to use the bakhtin as reasoning for translation the use a first person narrative and reference dialogue and talk about the social identity of the speaker. Sorry. I was hating my essays and now I miss it and am bored.

I'll send you mine to do...

Have turned into first person prose, just fine tuning it now. Thank you. :)

Oh I loved the Waste Land....I am a Waste Land bore.

PS - Frothy - I cheated on the Proust and bought the translation....still bloody awful.