In a number of his studies Mikhail Bakhtin pays attention to the history of the novel, identifying various traditions of the genre and naming them so as to create a typology for the novel and define the characteristics of these types. What is palpable in Bakhtin's view of the history of the novel is his firm emphasis on certain authors and phases of the genre. On the one hand he emphasizes Renaissance folklore and the carnival tradition as represented in particular by Rabelais; on the other, his interest lies in the Bildungsroman, the late eighteenth-century novel of education. Bakhtin highlights in particular two of Goethe's novels, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795–96) and Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (1821–29), which represent for Bakhtin a seminal turning point in the history of the novel. In addition, we recognize Bakhtin as a theorist – and devotee of – Dostoevsky's novels, in which he perceived the polyphonic novel in its most possible perfection. Bakhtin seemed to focus specifically on these writers in order to emphasize their position as the crowning literary representatives of their respective historical ages (cf. Brandist 2002, 133). All in all, the novel was for Bakhtin not merely one literary genre among others: it stood for a profound form of thinking that represented the prevalent views and ideas of the historical period in question (Burton 1996, 44).