A Novel

"The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types..."

This line for me depicts exactly what Bahktin believed the novel to be. In the excerpt that we read in class we found that Bahktin emphasized the stylistic molds that confined a lot of authors and how many authors have greatly restricted their works in order to fit into this appointed style that they felt they have had to stay within. In "Discourse in the Novel", Bahktin discussed the creative and stylistic freedom that novelist were allotted and how this freedom allowed authors to be better in a sense.

This particular excerpt made me reflect on how as a child i was taught the basic "standards" of writing and how five paragraphs with five sentences each were what was typically expected of me as a writer. Of course i later learned that that wasn't necessarily the case. I also recall the generic introductory paragraph that we were all forced to start our essays with without deviation.

This came to mind because although we have grown into writers and have been taught to have our own unique style to an extent we are all still kind of confined to a generic style of writing that we were taught was expected, that has followed us from childhood.