In a substantial revision of his 2000 Ph.D dissertation at the University of Sheffield, Renfrew (Russian, U. of Exeter) examines the Bakhtin school and on that foundation develops a free hypothesis about the nature of literature and the tasks of literary theory. His topics include Bakhtin and Dostoevsky beyond formalism, representation and the two lines of genre theory, and speech genres and literary genres. Distributed in North America by the David Brown Book Company. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)