Set in the context of the various materialist approaches to literary aesthetics that emerged in the twentieth century, Renfrew's study presents a new synthesis of the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) and his circle, Russian Formalism, and elements of the 'official' ideology of the early Soviet period

Introduction: Between the Lines in the Soviet 1920s 1 The Problem of Material 2 Bakhtin and Dostoevsky beyond Formalism 3 The Problem of Material and the Problem of Genre 4 Representation and the Two Lines of Genre Theory in Bakhtin 5 A Neo-Idealist Theory of Genre 6 Speech Genres and Literary Genres, Conclusion: The Fates of Literary Theory