Literature as Dialogue: Invitations Offered and Negotiated ed. by Roger D. Sell (review)
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The term “dialogue,” which etymologically means a “literary work consisting of a conversation between two or more persons,” was extended around 1400 to simply denote a “conversation” (Online Etymology Dictionary). In literary studies, the term has undergone further metaphorical extensions and is used, for example, to refer to the ways in which (A) authors “communicate” with their readers, (B) readers engage with literary texts, or (C) the texts themselves relate to other texts. In the present volume, Roger D. Sell conceptualizes “literature as dialogue” as a form of communication between authors and readers, whereby authors offer “invitations” to readers and readers accept or, rather, “negotiate” them: “At its best, literary activity consists of writer-audience interchanges that are reciprocally even-handed” (Sell 2). Moreover, these “bi-directional and bi-contextual modes of communication . . . tend to make or consolidate a community” (5). Similarly, Carmen Popescu, in her contribution on the Christian Orthodox poetry by Scott Cairns and Cristian Popescu, talks about an “ongoing conversation between writers across centuries, locations and traditions” (215). The question arises what is gained by this metaphorical manner of speaking. After all, communication between authors and readers can hardly be “reciprocal” and “bi-directional” in a literal sense unless one imagines them to exchange letters or to speak face to face. And how can authors and readers (or authors and other authors) who are separated by time and space be said to form a “community,” except on the level of ideas or their respective “imaginaries” (Iser)? The problem with differentiation becomes most visible in David Fishelov’s contribution, where “dialogue” and “dialogicity” are used to cover the “dialogical form” (23) of actual dialogues, the use of “dual voices” (24) or a kind of ventriloquism in novels (Bakhtin’s dialogism and polyphony), the “dialogical function” that rests on an invitation to readers to “ponder and deliberate upon two competing ideas” (24–25), but also the “inner, tense dialogue” (31) a reader experiences when reading Swift’s A Modest Proposal and, finally, an intrinsic human quality since “we all carry within ourselves layers of different voices and positions” (39). The heuristic value of such pan-dialogism remains questionable.
Furthermore, the “idea of dialogue” (Thomas) that underlies Sell’s concept of “communicational criticism” is precisely one that sees dialogue as intrinsically democratic and as fostering a sharing of ideas among equals. However, there is a certain inconsistency in arguing that a mediating critic, “without in any sense urging the audiences of literary works to surrender their own standpoint and criteria, can try to encourage better understanding and a more empathetic response” (13; italics mine). In his own contribution, “In Dialogue with the Ageing Wordsworth,” Sell again claims that “a critic can exactly pinpoint genuine communication in the way writers actually direct their words towards their addressees” (162). One wonders whether the critics’ hermeneutic agendas suffice [End Page 353] to establish what a “better understanding” or a “more empathetic response” to a literary text actually is.
Still, the individual contributions to the volume do, on the whole, raise interesting questions as they move along some less well-trodden paths. Indeed, much of what underlies the concept of “literature as dialogue” in this volume could be read in the light of dialectics (Castore, Fishelov, King, Muždeka, Rimon), hermeneutics (Ledent, Sell, Skwara, Toker), or anthropology (Chen, Ledent, Müller-Wood, Popescu)—which are, incidentally, the three interrelated concepts that form the foundation of Friedrich Schleiermachers theory of communication (“Theorie des Gesprächs”; see Pleger, 134–88). An example of a contribution which uses “dialogue” not only in a metaphorically extended sense but attends to fictional dialogue more narrowly conceived is Leona Toker’s article on Joseph Conrad’s novella “Falk.” By offering a close reading of some of the novella’s dialogues and other character interactions as a starting point, Toker is able to show what may entice readers to re-read the text. She then also demonstrates what hitherto neglected or overlooked aspects of the story may surface...
