THE AUTHOR-CREATOR AND THE POLYPHONIC HERO: THE DISCURSIVE PROCEDURES OF IMMISCIBILITY AND INTER-INDEPENDENCE
MARCOS ROGÉRIO MARTINS COSTAABSTRACT. This article aims to describe discursive procedures in the study of literature. We focus our interest on the novelistic aesthetics of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), who, according to Bakhtin (1999), is the author-creator of the polyphonic novel. The body of our analysis is from excerpts of three meetings between the characters Raskolnikov and Porfiry, chosen according to their relevance to our analysis. Our proposed objectives are: (i) to present two discourse procedures (immiscibility and inter-independence) that help us understand the polyphonic novel; (ii) to discuss the results of our analysis in relation to Bakhtin’s study (1999) to verify the relevance of the proposed procedures. Our method is hypothetically-deductive, i.e., it seeks theoretical assumptions and testable hypotheses, which we pursue to establish new theoretical parameters. As a result of this study, we confirm the proposed procedures, and demonstrate the heuristic potential of investigating the polyphonic novel for the field of literature and culture. pp. 35–53
Keywords: polyphonic novel; hero; Bakhtin’s philosophy; ideology