"Dramatic Texture and Philosophical Debate in Prior's Dialogues of the Dead," in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 28, No. 3, Summer, 1988, pp. 427-41.

In this essay Nelson supplies an overview of what he considers Prior's unique contributions to the "dialogues of (or with) the dead" literary form.

Since ancient times, the dialogue has proven itself one of the most versatile of all the forms of literature. One offshoot of this form, the dialogue of the dead, has had, however, a much less fertile literary history.¹ The three most eminent writers of this more restricted form are probably Lucian, Fontenelle, and Fenelon, but there is another who merits, and is beginning to receive, a wider recognition. In the final years of his life, Matthew Prior composed several dialogues of the dead that have received high praise from their few commentators. K. N. Colvile declares that they are "among the very...