A Reflection on the Narrative Criticism: Logic of Dialogue and Polyphonic Narrative Approach

After translating the works of Bakhtins, his theory of the logic of dialogue and polyphony is widely applied for classic and contemporary literary texts. In some cases generalizations and oversimplifications of his theory about narrative causes a sort of misunderstanding which leads to a descriptive analysis of the narrative and thus the depth and angles of his theory have been neglected. In this article, I tried to review the analysis and implementation of the fundamental components of the theory of polyphonic narrative text. To this end, the story of "the devil awakens Muawiyah," from Rumi's Mathnavi and "Kiss the Beautiful Face of God" by Mustafa Mastour were chosen (as examples of both classic and contemporary narrative texts) and the novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky was selected as the reference text. Research is based on a dual approach which is borrowed from the structuralist criticism approach and mode of coexistence of conflicting voices in the text, which is the dominant element in Bakhtin's polyphonic theory. In brief the result shows that the narrative analysis should be based on the principle of mutual acceptance and co-existence and mutual interaction of the two concepts in the text. So, all the narrative techniques from the presence of the "other" to carnivalization, humor, frequency and point of view of the narrator and direct quotes have to accept other voices. Based on this, "Kiss the Beautiful Face of God" is monophonic for the lack of mutual actions and voices and "the devil awakens Muawiyah" is polyphonic for it doesnt give a definite answer to the opposing voices and sounds co-exist relatively.