Dialogue and Literature: Apostrophe, Auditors, and the Collapse of Romantic Discourse

Extending and reframing the works of Bakhtin, Gadamer, Ong, and Foucault, Macovski constructs a theoretical model of literary dialogue and applies it to a range of Romantic texts. He conceives of literary discourse as a matrix of interactive voices which are not only contained within the text, but extend beyond it to other works, authors, and interpretations. A given speaker engages not only fellow characters, but his or her own past, present, and future. According to this view, literary meaning…