ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the implications of speech genres for the idea of 'literature' itself. Medvedev's description of 'conditions of performance and perception' is already seem very familiar. The work remains an utterance, the perspective on the generic relations to other utterances works must begin with its own conditions of performance and perception. The problem with Medvedev's theory of genre, broadly consistent though it is with the concept of dialogism, is that it hardly seems related to what Bakhtin himself chooses to do with the idea of genre in his own work. From the moment it appears in the latter's book on Dostoevsky 'the creator of an essentially new novelistic genre, the polyphonic novel' genre has been at least as much of a disruptive force as it has been a unifying force in the context of Bakhtin's work as a whole. The 'epic past' describes more than just the theme of epic, however: it gestures also towards its chronotope.