Bakhtinian ‘Journalization’ and the Mid‐Victorian Literary Marketplace

Abstract

AbstractThis paper forms part of a Literature Compass cluster on Modern Book History. The full cluster is made up of the following articles:‘Between Then and Now: Modern Book History’, Kate Longworth, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00474.x.‘Ezra Pound's Cantos: A Compact History of Twentieth‐Century Authorship, Publishing and Editing’, Mark Byron, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00475.x.‘ “The Making of the Book”: Roy Fisher, the Circle Press and the Poetics of Book Art’, Matthew Sperling, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00476.x.‘Bakhtinian “Journalization” and the Mid‐Victorian Literary Marketplace’, Dallas Liddle, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00477.x.‘Manuscript in Print: The Materiality of Alternative Comics’, Emma Tinker, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00478.x.‘Lost in a World of Books: Reading and Identity in Pre‐War Japan’, Susan C. Townsend, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00479.x.***In now‐famous remarks on ‘novelization’, M. M. Bakhtin theorized a mechanism by which one literary genre influences the content and structure of other genres. The popular and critical success of the novel form demonstrates its specific discursive advantages over other genres, which recognize these advantages and often attempt to copy or adapt to them. Though the influence Bakhtin describes goes only one way – the novel ‘novelizes’ other genres – novelization is not an isolated phenomenon, but an example or case study within Bakhtin's larger ‘Galilean’ conception of genre interaction. Parallel cases should therefore exist: in other literary markets and moments in book history we should expect great artistic, popular, or financial success by one genre to lead contemporary writers to adopt elements of the successful genre, or to adjust their practices in response to it. This prediction is particularly important because for Bakhtin genres are more than outward conventions; they are ‘form‐shaping ideologies’ with inherent knowledges and ways of thinking. Adopting or adapting a new genre requires a writer to change not simply forms, but also attitudes, assumptions, and worldview. My paper hypothesizes a Bakhtinian moment of genre influence in Great Britain in and immediately after 1855, triggered by the sudden rise in the perceived power of newspaper press discourse. Factors including the apparent political power wielded by the press during the Crimean War, and the repeal of the newspaper stamp, with its resulting proliferation of apparently successful new journals, combined to raise the perceived cultural, financial, and political status of newspaper discourse in this period dramatically. I consider critically the evidence for a resulting ‘journalization’ of other discourse genres between 1855 and 1860, reflected partly by a sudden proliferation of journalist characters and considerations of journalism in British fiction and poetry of this period.