Books
Wordsworth, Dialogics, and the Practice of Criticism
In recent decades, Wordsworth's poetry has become a point of focus for a great many of the proliferating schools of criticism and theoretical paradigms that dominate modern literary studies. Don Bialostosky here addresses the problem that the multiplicity of criticism has outrun the capacity to respond to it, often leaving teaching practices behind in their reflection of older models of literary study. Bialostosky's method draws on the work of Bakhtin and his followers to create a "dialogic" critical synthesis of what Wordsworth's readers--from Coleridge to de Man--have made of his poetry. He reveals an understanding of Wordsworth's poetry as itself "dialogically" responding to its various contexts, and opens up fruitful possibilities for current criticism and teaching of Wordsworth. This challenging book uses the case of Wordsworth studies to make a far-reaching survey of modern literary theory and its implications for the practice of criticism and teaching today.
LikeRhetorical Traditions and British Romantic Literature
C0-authored with Lawrence Needham
Making Tales: The Poetics of Wordsworth's narrative Experiments
Informed by a "poetics of speech" developed from the work of the Bakhtin School, this book offers an alternative to the Aristotelian emphasis on narrative as the presentation of plot that highlights narrative as someone's relating of words, deeds, or experiences to someone else. With special attention to reported speech, it offers appreciative readings of Wordsworth's experimental narrative poems that Coleridge denigrated, readings of the poems in which Wordsworth grapples with the expectations of a "tale," and readings of the versions of Wordsworth's encounter with the discharged soldier on the high road.
Contents
Introduction. The Fate of Taste and the Spirit of Human Knowledge
Chapter One. Narrative Diction and the Poetics of Speech
Chapter Two. Discourse in Life as Discourse in Art
Chapter Three. Tales
Chapter Four. Dialogic Personal Anecdotes
Chapter Five. From Anecdote to Episode: The Discharged Soldier in The Prelude
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