AATSEEL 2015 Panel Abstracts
Title: Bakhtin’s King Lear as The Aging Hamlet Who Has Finally Discovered What it
Means to Be
Author: Denis Zhernokleyev, Princeton University
In “Dopolneniia k Rable,” written in part to combat the understanding of carnival as infinite
comic relief, Bakhtin returns to his 1920’s theory of vision through the idea of “gleaning one’s
own death” [podglyadet sobstvennuiu smert’] in King Lear. Like Raskolnikov, Lear is
confronted by a vision of life’s totality unveiled before his eyes through his own abdication,
which Bakhtin interprets as the moment of Lear’s death. Utter impotence to influence the events
after the abdication brings Lear to a realization and acceptance of his own determined, embodied
presence in the world. Lear’s “death,” however, is not simply another phase of incessant
carnival, interchangeable in its ambivalence, but a two-step movement that brings about — albeit
in potentia — the final redeeming vision of reality. By reading the Rabelais notes in light of
Bakhtin’s early ideas, the paper will examine the significance of vision for Bakhtin’s later
philosophy.