This interdisciplinary volume of collected, mostly unpublished essaysdemonstrates how Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogic meaning--and itssubsequent elaborations--have influenced a wide range of critical discourses.With essays by Michael Holquist, Jerome J. McGann, John Searle, Deborah Tannen,Gary Saul Morson, Caryl Emerson, Shirley Brice Heath, Don H. Bialostosky, PaulFriedrich, Timothy Austin, John Farrell, Rachel May, and Michael Macovski, thecollection explores dialogue not only as an exchange among intratextual voices,but as an extratextual interplay of historical influences, oral forms, andcultural heuristics as well. Such approaches extend the implications of dialoguebeyond the boundaries of literary theory, to anthropology, philosophy,linguistics, and cultural studies. The essays address such issues as theestablishment and exercise of political power, the relation betweenconversational and literary discourse, the historical development of the essay,and the idea of literature as social action. Taken together, the essays arguefor a redefinition of literary meaning--one that is communal, interactive, andvocatively created. They demonstrate that literary meaning is not rendered by asingle narrator, nor even by a solitary author--but is incrementally exchangedand constructed.