Literary Communication as Dialogue: Responsibilities and Pleasures in Post-Postmodern Times. Selected Papers 2003–2020 by Roger D. Sell

Abstract

Reviewed by: Literary Communication as Dialogue: Responsibilities and Pleasures in Post-Postmodern Times. Selected Papers 2003–2020 by Roger D. Sell Sarah Gilead Roger D. Sell, Literary Communication as Dialogue: Responsibilities and Pleasures in Post-Postmodern Times. Selected Papers 2003–2020. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2020. 425 pp. This collection of nineteen previously published essays, all by Roger Sell, may be considered a follow-up to his 2019 collection, A Humanizing Literary Pragmatics: Theory, Criticism, Education. Selected Papers 1985–2002. Sell's method, reflected in each of the essays, derives from literary pragmatics. Readers well versed in this and related linguistic fields, such as general pragmatics, speech-act theory, communication studies, and stylistics, will find Sell's terminology and ways of thinking readily accessible. However, as he notes in his Introduction, he is careful in each essay to explain, for the benefit of non-specialist readers, whatever terms and linguistic models are needed to understand it. While this practice is laudable, as are Sell's lucid expositions and textual analyses, it leads to repetition. In essay after essay, the reader finds similar arguments and explanations, yet Sell varies the examples and texts he analyzes in support of his positions. Each essay is self-contained. Sell notes that they need not be read consecutively. In fact, doing so requires rereading (or skipping) similar passages. Further, in contrast to what would be expected in a book where each chapter builds on the arguments of the preceding one, Sell does not lay out the origins and contexts of literary pragmatics, or present a comprehensive survey of foundational works and authors in the related linguistic fields. Readers wishing to review or acquaint themselves with them must look carefully throughout the essays to find references. Sell situates his approach within the context of contemporary forms of literary inquiry, which consider literary works in relation to other cultural productions and discourses ("worlds"). In particular, he explores the links between literary and non-literary ("human") communication, especially the potentiality for reciprocal dialogue. He distinguishes his aims from those of communication specialists who tend to focus on language as serving the exchange of information, or on its manipulation for hegemonic purposes. Sell seeks appreciation of communicative good practices. Often ignored by readers and literary scholars, the potentiality for dialogic communication exists in the relationships among writers, readers, and critics, and has important ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Sell aims to redress this lack of awareness, and "to develop a historical literary pragmatics that would re-humanize the discussion" (3). From various angles and through discussions of a wide variety of literary genres, authors, and texts, [End Page 175] the essays push back against the notion of social determination of identity, the hyper-specialization of literary terms and practices, and the "disnaturing" of the reading experience, and encourage fostering an egalitarian human relationship, or "dialogicality," between authors and readers. The ethical component of such dialogues assumes the capacity of readers to acknowledge and reciprocate authors' faith in literary communication and in their readers. In several essays, the close readings of texts in their historical-cultural contexts show how a writer—playwright, poet, or novelist—might recognize and respect readers' autonomy. These literary analyses exemplify and seek to promote in readers and critics a reciprocal response to what Roger Sell sees as writers' courtesy towards and trust in the reader's open-minded acceptance of the author-as-other. When readers achieve the desired "proactive catholicity" (208), both ethical and aesthetic needs are satisfied. Frequently referring to Keats's "negative capability," the book focuses on literary works (as well as critical/reading practices) that are free of coercive dogmatism, do not have designs on their readers, and allow for their free agency as individuals. Having dealt elsewhere with the dialogic ethics in the addressivity of Wordsworth's poetry, in the essay included here Sell considers the possible range of reader responses to Wordsworth's late poetry—often unappreciated by readers and critics alike. For Sell, the poet's explorations of his own aging invite readers' reciprocal thoughtfulness, open-mindedness, and honesty. Sell's particular animus is toward those postmodern intellectuals and literary critics who view all cultural productions as inevitably expressing or...