Romantic Literature In Light of Bakhtin

What's welcome in Reed's book, just now amid current studies of Romanticism and of Bakhtin as thinker, is strength on both sides of the line: new reasons to consider Romanticism as a period with its own complex unity, new applications for Bakhtin's ideas about the persons who speak and listen in an utterance. In Reed's presentation of Bakhtin, I find original his emphasis on originality and creativity, a central but largely neglected theme in Bakhtin's work; his demonstration that Bakhtin extended Formalist premises as well as refuted them; his full recognition that, following work on the topic by others, Bakhtin's concepts of dialogue and speech genres pertain to poems as well as novels; and his extension of the idea of architectonics from aesthetic activity as such to the history of ideas and periodization. In his picture of the Romantic period I also admire his account of early efforts--from A. O. Lovejoy forward--that attempted to define a period consciousness; his own way of defining the period's style by means of oppositions; his lively use of critical terms (especially person, author, hero, chorus) to show how particular texts support his claims about the era; and his invention of a new speech genre (heroic romance) to denote fictions of negativity like "Manfred" and Moby Dick.