Epic and Novel

Epic and Novel: Towards a Methodology for the Study of the Novel [Эпос и роман (О методологии исследования романа)] is an essay written by Mikhail Bakhtin in 1941 that compares the novel to the epic; it was one of the major literary theories of the twentieth century.

The essay was originally given as a paper in the Moscow Institute of World Literature on 24 March 1941 under the name "The Novel as a Literary Genre" ['Роман как литературный жанр']. However, it became well known after its 1970 publication (under its current name) in the Russian journal Questions of Literature [Вопросы Литературы]. It was re-published in a 1975 collection of Bakhtin's writings, Questions of Literature and Aesthetics [Вопросы литературы и эстетики]. The essay, along with others from this collection, was translated into English by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson in their publication The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin.

In vol. 3 of Bakhtin's Collected Writings [Собрание сочинений], published in 2012, this article appears under Bakhtin's original title ("The Novel as a Literary Genre"), and with the opening paragraph, edited out from earlier publications, restored. Also published are Bakhtin's notes for the lecture, on which the article is based, and a partial transcript of the discussion that followed the lecture. As the newly published material reveals, Bakhtin framed this article as a study in the philosophy of genres.