Mikhail Bakhtin and the group of thinkers known as the Bakhtin Circle have had a massive influence on contemporary literary and cultural theory. Bakhtin is recognized as perhaps the key theorist on the novel as a genre, and his writings on carnival in popular culture are a recurrent theme in cultural studies. The influence of the Circle has recently spread into social theory, philosophy and psychology, which means that a narrow literary approach is now inadequate for fully understanding the breadth of their ideas. Moreover, recent research has revolutionized our understanding of the work of the Bakhtin circle, as re-translation has revealed the extent to which the corpus of Bakhtin's work was in fact an extraordinary collaborative venture, originating from a collective of scholars.

This is the first book to bring together this significant new research on the Circle, setting it within a historical and intellectual context and emphasizing the importance of the work of the Circle as a whole. Craig Brandist offers a new look at the significance of Bakhtin's legacy, and brings into clearer focus the contribution of others in the circle-including Voloshinov, Medvedev, Pumpianskii and Kagan-whose work has so often been obscured, assessing the fundamental role they played in shaping Bakhtinian thought.