Imaginary Dialogues in English

Explorations of a Literary Form. Edited by Till Kinzel and Jarmila Mildorf.

The essays in this volume provide exemplary readings of dialogical texts in English literature and philosophy, combining literary, linguistic, and philosophical scholarship. Plato's and other ancient writers' use of dialogue as literary form inspired many writers from Thomas More, George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift and Bernard Mandeville to Walter Savage Landor, W. H. Mallock, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Samuel Beckett, Philip Roth or Roger Scruton. From Early Modern literature and philosophy to the periods of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, this volume stresses the importance of imaginary dialogues by providing wide-ranging overviews and detailed textual analyses. Discussions of the dialogical form in Victorianism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism further extend the study to more recent major examples of the multiple functions of imaginary dialogues. Drawing on a wealth of material, this book will appeal to everyone with an interest in the complexities of literary and philosophical dialogues. The volume consists of two chapters: I. From the Renaissance to the Age of Conversation: From More to Swift; II. From Romanticism to the Postmodern Age: From Peacock to Scruton. Twelve contributions by Christoph Ehland, Till Kinzel, Anja Merbitz, Jürgen Meyer, Jarmila Mildorf, Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock, Virgil Nemoianu, Christoph Schubert, Hans Ulrich Seeber, Horst Seidl, Michael Szczekalla, and Bronwen Thomas. - Contents: Till Kinzel/Jarmila Mildorf: New Perspectives on Imaginary Dialogues. An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. -- Horst Seidl: Notes on the Difference between Fictional and Philosophical Dialogues, with Reference to Thomas More's "Utopia" and Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis". - Jürgen Meyer: "It is the dialogue, and not the press!" Modernist Misconceptions of the Early Modern Dialogue. - Michael Szczekalla: Towards a Dialogic Consensus on Ethics and Religion. Shaftesbury, Berkeley, and Hume. - Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock: Limited Room for Manoeuvre: The Functional Specifics of Dialogue in the Second Volume of Bernard Mandeville's "The Fable of the Bees". - Jarmila Mildorf: Polite Conversation, Implicatures, and Comical Effect. Jonathan Swift and P. G. Wodehouse. -- Virgil Nemoianu: Two Types of Moderation in English Romanticism. - Christoph Ehland: Satanic Dialogues. James Hogg's "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" and the Pathology of Dialogical Imagination. - Hans Ulrich Seeber: Crisis, Culture and Form. The Uses of Dialogue in W. H. Mallock's "The New Republic" (1877). - Christoph Schubert: Dialogue and Power. Turn-Taking and Speech Acts in Ivy Compton-Burnett's "Manservant and Maidservant". - Anja Merbitz: Samuel Beckett's "Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit". A Literary Text in Disguise? - Bronwen Thomas: The 'Idea of Dialogue' with Reference to Philip Roth's "Deception". - Till Kinzel: Serious Playfulness. Roger Scruton's Philosophical Dialogism in the "Xanthippic Dialogues". - 266 Seiten, gebunden (Beihefte zur Germanisch-Romanischen Monatsschrift; Heft 46/Universitätsverlag Winter 2012)