Self-consciousness in the Novel: A Study of Hegel’s and Bakhtin’s Points of View

Hegel, a German philosopher, and Bakhtin, a Russian literary critic, are the two thinkers who have placed the novel within the framework of their contemplation and have focused on the element of self-consciousness in the novel. In Hegel’s philosophy, in the course of the Spirit’s development towards freedom, the novel is the highest manifestation of the Spirit in artistic form, where the Spirit reaches one of the highest levels of self-consciousness. Moreover, due to its origins in the romantic era of art, the novel has heroes with self-consciousness. Bakhtin views self-consciousness in the novel from two perspectives: one is where he introduces the novel as a kind of self-conscious genre, and the other one is where he speaks about the self-consciousness of the novel’s hero. When Bakhtin introduces Dostoevsky as the creator of the polyphonic novel, he says it is the hero’s self-consciousness that gives Dostoevsky’s novels the quality of polyphony.  Yet, the talk of self-consciousness in the novel intertwines with the talk of homelessness in both thinkers’ discussions. In this paper, we have tried to show the position of each of the two thinkers with regard to this subject, their similarities and differences, and the dialogue between them.