Bakhtin, Lukács and German Romanticism: The Case with the Epic and Irony

Abstract

This paper concentrates on Bakhtin’s and Lukács’ works on the theory of the novel and the epic written between 1914 and 1944. In the first part it examines the grounds for such a comparison and tries to make explicit and justify its approach. Then it dwells on the way Bakhtin and Lukács defined and used the notion of genre and in the second half it proceeds to discuss some aspects of Bakhtin’s and Lukács’ attitude to German romanticism and its relevance to their views of the novel and the epic. It tries to use the observations to produce a more general picture of the similarities between Bakhtin and Lukács embedded in a framework of crucial differences.