Natalia Bonetskaya’s ‘Bakhtin triptych’

The authors analyze N. Bonetskaya’s monograph and the two volumes of M. Bakhtin’s works she prepared for publication. In her book Bakhtin as a Philosopher [Bakhtin kak filosof ], Bonetskaya attempts a holistic reconstruction of Bakhtin’s philosophical-aesthetic and literary-critical legacy. The authors acknowledge Bonetskaya’s independent viewpoint and well-founded arguments, while also pointing to a few drawbacks in her study. The two volumes containing Bakhtin’s own works compiled and commented by Bonetskaya have distinct scholarly value. Her comments and footnotes piece together a coherent and uncontroversial system of Bakhtin’s ‘first philosophy’ and discover the way it determines Bakhtin’s writings in the 1920s and 1930s, and resurfaces in the 1960s and early 1970s. The reviewers find that Bonetskaya’s books are noteworthy milestones in modern Bakhtin studies and will provide relevant insights for subsequent analyses of Bakhtin’s legacy and preparation of new comments to his texts.