SHAKESPEARE AND THE BAKHTINIAN DIALOGISM: THE CASE OF OTHELLO
SHAKESPEARE AND THE BAKHTINIAN DIALOGISM: THE CASE OF OTHELLO

Summary/Abstract: Bakhtin’s innovative conception of language provided the ground for further studies on the nature of the language of literature. As the scientific advances were depriving literature from its social roots and reducing literary works to a mere ground for the play of formal “devices”, Bakhtin’s theory of language paved the way for the return of the social to the study of literary works. Bakhtin was certainly well aware that literature, as a reflection of socio-cultural relations, employs language to its greatest advantage as it is the only means literature has for expressing its themes. That is why he first proposed his theory of dialogism with regard to the language of literature in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Although he firmly believed that the language of novel was dialogic, Bakhtin did not hold the same stance toward drama. Taking Shakespeare’s Othello as an example, we have tried in the present paper to account for the highly dialogic language of Shakespeare in this play.

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