The Critique Of Dialogue And Drama

Bakhtin puts forward the critique of dialogue and pronounces that there is no existence of authentic dialogue in drama. This paper proves that it is not that there is no dialogue in all dramas by means of proving there is dialogue in E. O'Neill's dramas.Through studying Dostoevsky's novels, Bakhtin elaborates dialogic novels' propensities, which are different from those of monologic novels:(1) The author and the hero are subjects of dialogue, between which a kind of free and equal dialogic relationship exists. The hero has his own subjectivity ., independence and freedom in the works, not being controlled by the author.(2) The hero radically contradicts any kind of definition about himself. He acutely senses his own inner unfmalizability, his capacity to outgrow from within and to render unture any externalizing and finalizing definition of him.(3) In a dialogic artistic world there is no things, no objects but subjects. There is no, therefore, object-directed discourse but double-voiced discourse, which is directed both toward the referential object of speech, as in ordinary discourse, and toward another's discourse, toward someone else's speech.The main point of Chapter 1 lies in the introduction of the critique of dialogue from the aspects of the genre resource of the dialogic literature, the cultural base - carnival, and dialogic relationships.The main point of Chapter 2 lies in a detailed discussion of the embodiment of dialogue in Eugene O'Neill's three dramas: "the Iceman Cometh", "A Long Day's Journey into Night", and "Strange Interlude".E. O'Neill portrayed his hero as the sum total of his consciousness andself-consciousness, ultimately through revealing the hero's final word on himself and on his world. What's important is not how the hero appears in the world but first and foremost how the world appears to the hero, and the hero appears to him. Thus it is inevitably to make the idea be the subject of artistic representation in his dramas.Carnivalization, which makes the creation of the open structure of the great dialogue possible, permeates into O'Neill's dramas. Ambivalence and laughter remain in the carnivalized image with the four carnival categories -eccentricity, familiarlization, mesalliances and profanation, when the images of carnival and camivalistic laughter are transposed into literature. The second part of Chapter 2 gives a detailed expression about camivalistic characteristics in O'Neill's dramas.In the third part of Chapter 2, the paper examines in O'Neill's dramas the use of double-voiced discourse, which inevitably arises under conditions of dialogic interaction. The four kinds of double-voicedness (stylization, parody, hidden polemic, and hidden dialogicality), are employed by E. O'Neill.The main points of Chapter 3 lies in the analysis of the reason of the existence of dialogue in drama and the following conclusion that there is neither absolute dialogic literature nor absolute monologic literature.Lastly, the paper introduces the significance of Bakhtin's dialogic theory in western literary theories and evaluates it positively.