The books in this series aim to combine the discussion and explication of some of the key discourses of contemporary literary theory (eg postmodernism, psychoanalysis, feminism) with reading of popular/classic literary texts. This text analyzes the way in which dialogism - based on the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin - has been taken up, refined and redefined by a wide range of literary and cultural critics, and then tests the usefulness of dialogism and its attendant concepts in readings of six literary texts.