Towards a New Material Aesthetics
Bakhtin, Genre and the Fates of Literary Theory

Alastair Renfrew

Cover of Towards a New Material Aesthetics

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

7 December 2006  •  218pp

ISBN: 978-1-900755-94-8 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

ISBN: 978-1-351197-11-3 (Taylor & Francis ebook)

ModernRussianPhilosophy

Set in the context of the various materialist approaches to literary aesthetics that emerged in the twentieth century, Renfrew's study presents a new synthesis of the work of the Bakhtin school, Russian Formalism, and elements of the 'official' ideology of the early Soviet period. The book's central aim in offering such a synthesis is to negotiate the poles of postmodernist subjectivism and 'traditional' materialism around which much current literary and critical theory has stagnated, and, as the title suggests, to point the way towards a newly conceived material basis for textual and literary analysis.

Alastair Renfrew is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter. He is the author of a forthcoming study of Mikhail Bakhtin, and is currently working on a book on Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Reviews:

  • ‘Alastair Renfrew's book offers an intricate and critical reading of what he sees as the decisive moment of origin of European literary theory in order then to fashion from that reading a (post-)theoretical position for our own time.’ — Graham Pechey, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1184-85 (full text online)
  • ‘Genre becomes in Renfrew's treatment of it a useful map for guidance along some of the more intriguing twists and turns in the Bakhtin canon... An important addition to the growing library of Bakhtiniana.’ — Michael Holquist, Slavonic and East European Review 87.1, 2009, 114-15 (full text online)
  • ‘Exceptional new work being produced on the Russian polymath, some of the most interesting of which was coming out of the University of Sheffield, whose Bakhtin Centre supports the work of an outstanding group of language theorists... Karine Zbinden and Alastair Renfrew are two of the excellent younger scholars from the Bakhtin Centre.’ — Michael Bernard-Donals, Slavic Review 68.1, Spring 2009, 193-95

Bibliography entry:

Renfrew, Alastair, Towards a New Material Aesthetics: Bakhtin, Genre and the Fates of Literary Theory (Legenda, 2006)

First footnote reference: 35 Alastair Renfrew, Towards a New Material Aesthetics: Bakhtin, Genre and the Fates of Literary Theory (Legenda, 2006), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Renfrew, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Renfrew, Alastair. 2006. Towards a New Material Aesthetics: Bakhtin, Genre and the Fates of Literary Theory (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Renfrew 2006: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Renfrew 2006: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

This Legenda title was first published by Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge.

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Permanent link to this title:

www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Towards-New-Material-Aesthetics