Maxim Gorky Literature Institute

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The Maxim Gorky Literary Institute (Russian: Литературный институт им. А. М. Горького) is a higher education institute in Moscow.

It was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, and received the current name at Gorky's death in 1936.

[edit] Controversies

In 1941 Mikhail Bakhtin, to obtain a post-graduate title, submitted to the Gorky Institute a dissertation on Rabelais;^[1] that work currently published as Rabelais and His World is now a classic of Renaissance studies and a very influential milestone in Literary criticism. But the dissertation which could not be defended until the war ended. In 1946 and 1949, the defense of this dissertation divided the scholars of Moscow into two groups: those official opponents guiding the defence who accepted the original and unorthodox manuscript, and those other professors who were against the manuscript’s acceptance. The book's earthy, anarchic topic was the cause of many arguments which ceased only when the government intervened. Resultantly, Bakhtin was denied a doctorate and granted a lesser degree by the State Accrediting Bureau. Thus, due to its content, the work was not published until 1965.^[2]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Holquist Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World p.10
2. ^ Holquist xxv

[edit] References

• Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, Second Edition. Routledge, 2002.
• Holquist, Michael. “Introduction.” Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. By Mikhail Bakhtin. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. ix-xxiii.