The poet and the pea: poems staged in Menippean dialogue to explore empathy in education

In dialogical theories of the self, presence is understood as socially constructed as each 'I' position within the self comes to voice the multiple and socially influenced selves that are always in relation. In this poetic inquiry, the poems stage a dialogue within the self where each speaker voices a different 'I' position. Framing the dialogue within Anderson's (1835) The Princess and Pea, I've written into the text "a poet" who is positioned as the princess in relation to the other interlocutors. The resulting interplay of the original and my adaptation follows the features of Menippean dialogue in that the interlocutors converse in an unusual world where one of them has a crisis which needs resolution. How authorial presence emerges in relation to the poetic dialogue is a central feature of the artfulness of the inquiry and its application to education. Throughout the paper, I employ Lacanian theory to explore ways a dialogical understanding of the self can offer a different kind of interaction for teachers and students, one where the play of polyphonic poetry is part of the aesthetic and empathetic work of provoking understanding.