Dialogue

Book excerpt: Dialogue is a many-sided critical concept; at once an ancient philosophical genre, a formal component of fiction and drama, a model for the relationship of writer and reader, and a theoretical key to the nature of language. In this clear and concise guide to the multiple significance of the term, Peter Womack outlines the history of dialogue form, illustrates dialogue in the novel and on stage, interprets the influential dialogic theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and examines the idea that literary study itself consists of a ‘dialogue’ with the past.