Lynne Pearce
Published: 1994
Total Pages: 221
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Dialogism means many things to many people, sometimes without reference to Bakhtin. Recognizing the broad use of the term, Lynne Pearce provides a comprehensive introduction to dialogism that combines an overview of Mikhail Bakhtin's major texts with an analysis of the way in which the term has been taken up, defined, and redefined by subsequent critics of widely varying theoretical and political hues. There is a particular focus on the way in which dialogics has proved especially attractive to theorists attempting to formulate new models of subjectivity and to feminists looking for ways to define the specificity of women's writing. The manner in which dialogism and its attendant concepts are used for a broad range of textual analysis is also explored. Discussion is supported by readings of six literary texts: Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, John Clare's 'asylum poem' Child Harold, Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Adrienne Rich's poetry collection Dream of a Common Language, and two recent 'classics' of feminist fiction, Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and Toni Morrison's Beloved. These imaginative engagements of text and theory provide a full exploration of Bakhtin's key conceptspolyphony, heteroglossia, double-voiced discourse, carnival, chronotype - and consider how these terms may have to be expanded and redefined in order to accommodate the differing interests of the criticism in hand.