This book makes a radical break with earlier interpretations of Bakhtin's work. Using recent Russian scholarship, Ken Hirschkop explodes many of the myths which have surrounded Bakhtin and his work and lays the ground for a new, more historically acute sense of his achievement. Through a comprehensive reading of Bakhtin's work, Hirschkop demonstrates that his discussion of the philosophy of language, literary history, popular-festive culture, and the phenomenology of everyday life revolved around a lifelong search for a new kind of modern ethical culture. A detailed examination of the major works reveals the careful interweaving of philosophical and historical argument which makes Bakhtin at once so compelling and so frustrating a writer. Hirschkop treats Bakhtin not as a metaphysician or a philosopher for the ages, but as a writer inevitably drawn into the historical conflicts produced by a modernizing and democratizing Europe. As a consequence, Bakhtin becomes a more sober but also more original writer, with a striking contribution to make to the definition of the democratic project.

Hirschkop's study excels on numerous levels: meticulous and elegant in execution and style, exhaustively researched, acribically documented, and rigorously argued, it betrays its author's masterful grip of his subject - both biographical-historical and conceptual-philosophical ... has certainly set new critical standards for Bakhtin scholarship to come. * Poetics Today *
This is an important and long-awaited book by one of the country's leading experts on Bakhtin and Bakhtinian theory. * Forum for Modern Language Studies *
The book is rounded off with an extremely useful and up-to-date bibliography which includes a detailed bibliography of Bakhtin's writings organised according to genre and chronology and also those of his "circle". * Forum for Modern Language Studies *
Very illuminating on Bakhtin's relationship with Saussure and linguistics. * The Yearbook of English Studies *
Undoubtedly the most reliable and up-to-date biographical excursus on Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle available in English. * Galin Tihanov, Times Higher Education Supplement *
Intellectually vigorous ... subtle and wide-ranging interpretation ... asks several compelling qustions. * Galin Tihanov, Times Higher Education Supplement *

Ken Hirschkop is Research Fellow in English Literature, University of Manchester