Mikhail Bakhtin Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel

The positive prerequisites mentioned above constitute one of the high points in the novel's coming to self-consciousness. They do not yet of course provide a theory of the novel. These statements are also not distinguished by any great philosophical depth. They do however illustrate the nature of the novel as a genre no less - if perhaps no more - than do other existing theories of the novel.