SOURCE: Miller, Paul Allen. “Sappho 31 and Catullus 51: The Dialogism of Lyric.” Arethusa, 26, no. 2 (spring 1993): 183-99.

In the following essay, Miller applies a Bakhtinian theory of lyric dialogism to Sappho's fragment number “31” and Catullus's translation of this poem, in order to suggest that the two works reflect radically different genres of composition.

Mikhail Bakhtin, in “Discourse in the Novel,” formulates what seems an ironclad distinction between poetic and novelistic discourse. Poetry, he argues, is essentially “monologic” and strives for a unity of discourse, “so that the finished work may rise as unitary speech, one co-extensive with its object.” The novel, on the other hand, is “dialogic,” representing a multiplicity of voices, not only through its characters, but also in its style, ideology, and representation of society.¹ This distinction, while provisionally useful for establishing what is unique to novelistic discourse, offers an ultimately unsatisfying account of dialogism's role in literature...