Ross Wilson: Critical Forms. Forms of Literary Criticism, 1750–2020. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.

• Irmtraud Huber

SCEPTIC: Are you serious about this? You want to write this review as a dialogue? Isn’t that a bit obvious?
ENTHUSIAST: Obvious, perhaps, once you have read Ross Wilson’s Critical Forms. But I assume my readers won’t have done so yet, because otherwise they wouldn’t have to read this review.
SCEPTIC: Okay, but Wilson’s book is not primarily concerned with dialogue, after all. That is just one of seven chapters! He also considers prefaces, selections, reviews, lectures, letters, and life-writing as critical forms. You are merely making a cheap attempt to copy what he does in his epilogue, which he writes as a dialogue with himself.
ENTHUSIAST: … and with Footnote. You shouldn’t forget Footnote. And yes, you are right, but the dialogue form intrigues me personally, and Wilson’s book gives me licence to experiment with it. Moreover, in his chapter on dialogues, he focuses repeatedly on dialogues which reference other texts.