From Bakhtin’s book to the thesis on Rabelais

history of the text from 1930 to 1952

Abstract

Recover part of writing context of the book “Popular culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The context of François Rabelais ”(1965), understood between 1930 and 1952, is the task that we propose in this article. Historiographical research is based on primary and secondary sources and recognizes its inconclusive and provisional nature. This task is justified by offering the Brazilian public knowledge of the close relationship between the theory of the novel and the work on Rabelais, as well as the circumstances in which the text was written. The results pointed out: the close connection between the theory of the novel developed in the 1930s and the book on Rabelais; the fact that “Problems of Dostoevsky’s creation” (1929) entered the history of Soviet literary theory shortly after its publication; the scientific personality of Mikhail Bakhtin; the revolutionary dimension of François Rabelais’s the work.