Intelligent Design vs. Mikhail Bakhtin vs. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Are novels written by a single, purposeful mind or by a group of alternate personalities?

Most book reviewers and literary critics seem to assume that novels are created by intelligent design. They think that, ultimately, a single mind, the author’s, is behind whatever narrators and characters are employed; that everything in the novel represents the author’s intention and has an understandable purpose.

One literary scholar who came close to dissenting from this conventional view was Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). In his literary analysis of Dostoevsky, Bakhtin spoke of “polyphony,” meaning that Dostoevsky’s characters have independent voices and minds of their own.

However, Bakhtin did not apply his concept of polyphony to Dostoevsky himself. Thus, in principle, it would be possible to discover Dostoevsky’s single authorial intention behind his polyphonic characters. But if you search Dostoevsky in this blog, you will find ample reason to suspect that Dostoevsky, himself, was “polyphonic” (had multiple personality).

Many of the writers quoted in this blog readily acknowledge that their novels are not created by intelligent design; rather, inspirations occur, character and narrator voices are heard, and so forth. When authors are interviewed, they are reluctant to give definitive interpretations of their work, because they are only the host personality.

Once you realize that a novel’s characters and narrators are alternate personalities, and not just the author’s manufactured puppets, literary interpretation becomes problematic. Whose views and purposes are you interpreting?

And the problem is not simply because characters and narrators may have their own agendas. They at least provide textual evidence to work with. But there may be other alternate personalities involved, working behind the scenes (conventionally thought of as the author’s “unconscious,” but conscious themselves).

Thus, as I proposed in a recent post, the least a book reviewer or literary critic should be prepared to do is to note things in a novel that do not seem to make sense, and not assume that the author could explain them.