Roger Sell (Åbo Akademi University, Turku Finland), "You, Me, and Dickens, Plus Lots of Others: The Communication Intransitivity of Novels"

In my viewliterary activity is one form of communication among others. In this paper, Ishall be discussing the extent to which communication in general, but moreespecially literary communication, and above all communication by way ofnovels, leaves human beings free and independent. We might perhaps wish that,in any kind of communication, addressers would fully respect the human autonomyof addressees, be they hearers or readers. As it happens, however, there iscommunication and communication. Sometimes the addresser-addressee relationshipas textually modelled puts real hearers or readers under considerable coercivepressure. At other times their human autonomy is both recognized and positivelyenhanced. To use my own terminology for this, there is transitive communicationand intransitive communication, a distinction observable in the communicationof novelists no less than in that of other kinds of communicator. In order toexplain what I have in mind here, I shall pay special attention to Dickens. I shallalso link what I say to the growth of literary communities, and to our currentcondition of post-postmodernity.