The novel’s many-voiced form correlates with social democratization

Evidence

Fatemeh Keshavarz has astutely noted that Nafisi’s liberal humanism is leavened with a dose of Bakhtinian formalism (Jasmine and Stars, 92); the Russian critic was one of the first to directly suggest a correlation between the many-voiced qualities of the novel and the democratization of society. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 742

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: Bakhtin’s polyphony/democratization link supplies a formal criterion for judging whether a novel contests or reinforces Islamophobia — directly transferable to judging Naqvi’s multi-accented narration in Home Boy.
• DEFINE: Introduces the Bakhtinian claim that the novel’s formal many-voicedness correlates with democracy — a critical vocabulary term useful for the reader’s hinge argument.