Bakhtin, Chaucer, and Anti-Essentialist Humanism

Description: In response to William McClellan's article and drawing on an earlier article of his own, Engle sketches how Bakhtin can function as a mediating figure in the current politics of theory and interpretation, particularly with ClT.; Engle sees Bakhtin "as pointing the way to an anti-essentialist and anti-foundationist position on literary value, literary genre, and the sociology of reading, which nonetheless is recognizably 'humanist' in asserting that literature transmits values and helps preserve consistent, deeply constructed and relatively stable pattern in human experience."; A response to William McClellen's, "Bakhtin's Theory of Dialogic Discourse, Medieval Rhetorical Theory, and the Multi-Voiced Structure of the 'Clerk's Tale'." See also Engle's "Chaucer, Bakhtin, and Griselda," and McClellen's response to it, "Lars Engle--'Chaucer, Bakhtin, and Griselda'."