antiphonic

dead brought into an antiphonic dialogue with the living.

The fact that objects talk to us has to be explained by a deep anthropological disposition: Human beings exist in an antiphonic relationship to their environment.

For if Dostoevsky is the master orchestrator of polyphony, then Mailer is the master conductor of the antiphonic novel in which the voices of different characters act as a Greek chorus by repeating the same basic themes from different stances.

Justifiable claims have been made for it as a peculiar version of moral drama, a typological historical epic, a sacred legend, and even a kind of psychological travel book.(1) It has also been described as a very early kind of cultural history, and the anxiety which was felt in the 1970s about whether it was, legitimate, history has given way to a more open acceptance of Its unorthodoxy and the recognition that within a fairly ordered structure, there exists a pattern of several discourses which are essentially antiphonic.