Polyphony (Literary)

Polyphony (in literary studies) is a type of artistic construction of the novel in which the work presents a plurality of independent, unmerged voices and consciousnesses — a full-fledged dialogue of equal positions rather than their subordination to a single authorial voice. The concept (borrowed from music) was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin in 'Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art' (1929; revised 1963 as 'Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics'), which named Fyodor Dostoevsky the creator of the polyphonic novel. In a polyphonic work, the hero is not an 'object' of the authorial word but an independent 'subject' of their own worldview; the author does not finalize the hero from outside but enters into dialogue with them. Polyphony is opposed to the 'monologic' novel, where worldviews are subordinated to the author's idea. The conception is closely linked to dialogism and became an influential tool for analyzing novelistic form, applied also to modernist and postmodern prose.