David Paul Nord
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195173116
- eISBN:
- 9780199835683
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195173112.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, ...
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In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, and the grace of God to place the same printed message into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. Though these entrepreneurs were savvy businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses. They were nonprofit religious organizations, including the American Bible Society, American Tract Society, and American Sunday School Union. Faith in Reading tells the story of the noncommercial origins of mass media in America. The theme is how religious publishers learned to work against the flow of ordinary commerce. Religious publishing societies believed that reading was too important to be left to the “market revolution”; they sought to foil the market through the “visible hand” of organization. Though religious publishers worked against the market, they employed modern printing technologies and business methods, and were remarkably successful, churning out millions of Bibles, tracts, religious books, and periodicals. At the same time, they tried to teach people to read those books in the most traditional way. Their aim was to use new mass media to encourage old reading habits. This book examines both publishers and readers. It is about how religious publishing societies imagined their readers. It is also about reader response — how ordinary readers received and read religious books and tracts in early 19th century America.Less
In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, and the grace of God to place the same printed message into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. Though these entrepreneurs were savvy businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses. They were nonprofit religious organizations, including the American Bible Society, American Tract Society, and American Sunday School Union. Faith in Reading tells the story of the noncommercial origins of mass media in America. The theme is how religious publishers learned to work against the flow of ordinary commerce. Religious publishing societies believed that reading was too important to be left to the “market revolution”; they sought to foil the market through the “visible hand” of organization. Though religious publishers worked against the market, they employed modern printing technologies and business methods, and were remarkably successful, churning out millions of Bibles, tracts, religious books, and periodicals. At the same time, they tried to teach people to read those books in the most traditional way. Their aim was to use new mass media to encourage old reading habits. This book examines both publishers and readers. It is about how religious publishing societies imagined their readers. It is also about reader response — how ordinary readers received and read religious books and tracts in early 19th century America.
Nicholas Dames
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199208968
- eISBN:
- 9780191695759
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208968.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
How did the Victorians read novels? The author answers that deceptively simple question by revealing a now-forgotten range of nineteenth-century theories of the novel, a range based in a study of ...
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How did the Victorians read novels? The author answers that deceptively simple question by revealing a now-forgotten range of nineteenth-century theories of the novel, a range based in a study of human physiology during the act of reading. He demonstrates the ways in which the Victorians thought they read, and uncovers surprising responses to the question of what might have transpired in the minds and bodies of readers of Victorian fiction. His detailed studies of novel critics who were also interested in neurological science, combined with readings of novels by Thackeray, Eliot, Meredith, and Gissing, propose a vision of the Victorian novel-reader as far from the quietly immersed being we now imagine — as instead a reader whose nervous system was addressed, attacked, and soothed by authors newly aware of the neural operations of their public. Rich in unexpected intersections, from the British response to Wagnerian opera to the birth of speed-reading in the late nineteenth century, this book challenges our assumptions about what novel reading once did, and still does, to the individual reader, and provides new answers to the question of how novels influenced a culture's way of reading, responding, and feeling.Less
How did the Victorians read novels? The author answers that deceptively simple question by revealing a now-forgotten range of nineteenth-century theories of the novel, a range based in a study of human physiology during the act of reading. He demonstrates the ways in which the Victorians thought they read, and uncovers surprising responses to the question of what might have transpired in the minds and bodies of readers of Victorian fiction. His detailed studies of novel critics who were also interested in neurological science, combined with readings of novels by Thackeray, Eliot, Meredith, and Gissing, propose a vision of the Victorian novel-reader as far from the quietly immersed being we now imagine — as instead a reader whose nervous system was addressed, attacked, and soothed by authors newly aware of the neural operations of their public. Rich in unexpected intersections, from the British response to Wagnerian opera to the birth of speed-reading in the late nineteenth century, this book challenges our assumptions about what novel reading once did, and still does, to the individual reader, and provides new answers to the question of how novels influenced a culture's way of reading, responding, and feeling.
Michael Sheringham
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158431
- eISBN:
- 9780191673306
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158431.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies ...
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This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies sixteen key autobiographical texts and situates them in the context of an evolving set of challenges and problems. Informed by a sophisticated awareness of recent theoretical debates, the book conceives autobiography as a distinctively open form of writing, perpetually engaged with different forms of ‘otherness’. Manifestations of the Other in the autobiographical process — from the reader, who incarnates other people, to ideology, against which individual truth must be pitted, to the potential otherness of memory itself — are traced through a scrutiny of the ‘devices and desires’ at work in a range of texts from Rousseau's Confessions, to Stendhal's Vie de Henry Brulard and Sartre's Les Mots. Other writers examined include Chateaubriand, Gide, Green, Leiris, Leduc, Gorz, Barthes, Perec, and Sarraute.Less
This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies sixteen key autobiographical texts and situates them in the context of an evolving set of challenges and problems. Informed by a sophisticated awareness of recent theoretical debates, the book conceives autobiography as a distinctively open form of writing, perpetually engaged with different forms of ‘otherness’. Manifestations of the Other in the autobiographical process — from the reader, who incarnates other people, to ideology, against which individual truth must be pitted, to the potential otherness of memory itself — are traced through a scrutiny of the ‘devices and desires’ at work in a range of texts from Rousseau's Confessions, to Stendhal's Vie de Henry Brulard and Sartre's Les Mots. Other writers examined include Chateaubriand, Gide, Green, Leiris, Leduc, Gorz, Barthes, Perec, and Sarraute.
Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184485
- eISBN:
- 9780191674273
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184485.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's ...
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This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's later fiction. It draws attention to the re-emergence of Marguerite Poradowska's influence, and how, in the late work in particular, Conrad exploited the techniques of traditional forms in order to question the structures of romance which continued to confine and classify women.Less
This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's later fiction. It draws attention to the re-emergence of Marguerite Poradowska's influence, and how, in the late work in particular, Conrad exploited the techniques of traditional forms in order to question the structures of romance which continued to confine and classify women.
Katharine Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199252534
- eISBN:
- 9780191719226
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252534.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication ...
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The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication is married with the outlandish adventures of young lovers, ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture combined. Fictions of Authorship re-examines these narratives in the light of their creators' developing understanding of the implications of authorship. Christened the ‘University Wits’ by an earlier generation of critics, Lyly, Greene, and Lodge were themselves displaced persons, attempting to shape careers in the new and often despised medium of print. Their attempts to demonstrate their learning while appealing to as wide a readership as possible led them to manufacture multiple authorial personae, and to reflect critically and sometimes outrageously on the works of their contemporaries and predecessors. Their texts are closely interwoven with each other. The authors competed to set new literary trends, often by overgoing the attempts of their peers. Apparently opposed literary modes were mixed, resulting in the placement of a persona like Lyly's Euphues in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Meanwhile the relationship between writer and reader became increasingly complex, as the authors began to tailor their fictions to an ever expanding market. By providing close and comparative readings of these short fictions, Fictions of Authorship charts the authors' increasing disillusionment with the confines of romance, but also their popular success. As they assimilated and domesticated the experiments of writers like Harvey, Sidney and Spenser, they created an irreverent alternative canon of ‘English literature'.Less
The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication is married with the outlandish adventures of young lovers, ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture combined. Fictions of Authorship re-examines these narratives in the light of their creators' developing understanding of the implications of authorship. Christened the ‘University Wits’ by an earlier generation of critics, Lyly, Greene, and Lodge were themselves displaced persons, attempting to shape careers in the new and often despised medium of print. Their attempts to demonstrate their learning while appealing to as wide a readership as possible led them to manufacture multiple authorial personae, and to reflect critically and sometimes outrageously on the works of their contemporaries and predecessors. Their texts are closely interwoven with each other. The authors competed to set new literary trends, often by overgoing the attempts of their peers. Apparently opposed literary modes were mixed, resulting in the placement of a persona like Lyly's Euphues in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Meanwhile the relationship between writer and reader became increasingly complex, as the authors began to tailor their fictions to an ever expanding market. By providing close and comparative readings of these short fictions, Fictions of Authorship charts the authors' increasing disillusionment with the confines of romance, but also their popular success. As they assimilated and domesticated the experiments of writers like Harvey, Sidney and Spenser, they created an irreverent alternative canon of ‘English literature'.
Emily Baragwanath
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199231294
- eISBN:
- 9780191710797
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231294.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Taking Plutarch's criticisms in de Malignitate Herodoti as a point of entry into Herodotus' strategies for guiding his readers' response, this chapter argues that Herodotus' reader is motivated to ...
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Taking Plutarch's criticisms in de Malignitate Herodoti as a point of entry into Herodotus' strategies for guiding his readers' response, this chapter argues that Herodotus' reader is motivated to take a particular, active stance towards his text. Herodotus is set in the context of the sophists. The theoretical background of Iser's reader response criticism is introduced, with Herodotus' presentation of the question of the Alcmaeonids' possible medizing after Marathon serving as a test case for a reader-response approach.Less
Taking Plutarch's criticisms in de Malignitate Herodoti as a point of entry into Herodotus' strategies for guiding his readers' response, this chapter argues that Herodotus' reader is motivated to take a particular, active stance towards his text. Herodotus is set in the context of the sophists. The theoretical background of Iser's reader response criticism is introduced, with Herodotus' presentation of the question of the Alcmaeonids' possible medizing after Marathon serving as a test case for a reader-response approach.
William A. Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195176407
- eISBN:
- 9780199775545
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in second-century Rome. The focus is on deep sociocultural contextualization for ...
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Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in second-century Rome. The focus is on deep sociocultural contextualization for reading events within specific communities, and thus the investigation proceeds in case-study fashion using the principal surviving witnesses. Explored are the communities of Pliny and Tacitus (with a look at Pliny’s teacher, Quintilian) from the time of the emperor Trajan; and from the time of the Antonines, the medical community around Galen, the philological community around Gellius and Fronto (with a look at the curious reading habits of Fronto’s pupil Marcus Aurelius), and the intellectual communities lampooned by the satirist Lucian. Along the way, evidence from the papyri is deployed to help to understand better and more concretely both the mechanics of reading, and the social interactions that surrounded the ancient book. The result is cultural history deeply written, of individual reading communities that differentiate themselves in interesting ways even while in aggregate showing a coherent reading culture with fascinating similarities and contrasts to the reading culture of today.Less
Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in second-century Rome. The focus is on deep sociocultural contextualization for reading events within specific communities, and thus the investigation proceeds in case-study fashion using the principal surviving witnesses. Explored are the communities of Pliny and Tacitus (with a look at Pliny’s teacher, Quintilian) from the time of the emperor Trajan; and from the time of the Antonines, the medical community around Galen, the philological community around Gellius and Fronto (with a look at the curious reading habits of Fronto’s pupil Marcus Aurelius), and the intellectual communities lampooned by the satirist Lucian. Along the way, evidence from the papyri is deployed to help to understand better and more concretely both the mechanics of reading, and the social interactions that surrounded the ancient book. The result is cultural history deeply written, of individual reading communities that differentiate themselves in interesting ways even while in aggregate showing a coherent reading culture with fascinating similarities and contrasts to the reading culture of today.
William A. Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195176407
- eISBN:
- 9780199775545
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
Fronto was the teacher and friend of Marcus Aurelius. Fronto’s Letters show a man intent on constructing literary culture within the context of the contubernium, an ideal of close connection and ...
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Fronto was the teacher and friend of Marcus Aurelius. Fronto’s Letters show a man intent on constructing literary culture within the context of the contubernium, an ideal of close connection and friendship. His pupil Aurelius, however, shows a strong inclination toward reading habits that privileged the solitary, a set of habits that his contemporaries judged idiosyncratic. The chapter also focuses on the use of excerpts and excerpting in imperial reading culture.Less
Fronto was the teacher and friend of Marcus Aurelius. Fronto’s Letters show a man intent on constructing literary culture within the context of the contubernium, an ideal of close connection and friendship. His pupil Aurelius, however, shows a strong inclination toward reading habits that privileged the solitary, a set of habits that his contemporaries judged idiosyncratic. The chapter also focuses on the use of excerpts and excerpting in imperial reading culture.
Helena Sanson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197264836
- eISBN:
- 9780191754043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264836.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
With the opening up of literary society and the erosion of its hierarchy that came about during the course of the Cinquecento, vernacular grammars ceased to be works only for scholars and authors ...
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With the opening up of literary society and the erosion of its hierarchy that came about during the course of the Cinquecento, vernacular grammars ceased to be works only for scholars and authors tried to extend their reach also to beginners, foreigners, and women. This chapter examines this process of relative popularization of grammar works and, at the same time, of the Questione. The first section outlines the shift in the envisaged readers of these works, with reference to social and political issues. The next two sections focus on women as addressees of grammatical works, both at the higher end of the social scale and more in general alongside the less learned, respectively. Continuing to follow the development of grammatical production in time, the last section investigates the reasons for the setback that the relationship between women and grammar suffered in the seventeenth century.Less
With the opening up of literary society and the erosion of its hierarchy that came about during the course of the Cinquecento, vernacular grammars ceased to be works only for scholars and authors tried to extend their reach also to beginners, foreigners, and women. This chapter examines this process of relative popularization of grammar works and, at the same time, of the Questione. The first section outlines the shift in the envisaged readers of these works, with reference to social and political issues. The next two sections focus on women as addressees of grammatical works, both at the higher end of the social scale and more in general alongside the less learned, respectively. Continuing to follow the development of grammatical production in time, the last section investigates the reasons for the setback that the relationship between women and grammar suffered in the seventeenth century.
Juliette Atkinson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780197266090
- eISBN:
- 9780191860003
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266090.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
It has become common to build an opposition between prudish Victorian England and permissive nineteenth-century France. The lack of a full-length study of nineteenth-century Anglo-French literary ...
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It has become common to build an opposition between prudish Victorian England and permissive nineteenth-century France. The lack of a full-length study of nineteenth-century Anglo-French literary relations means that both English reserve and French license have been greatly exaggerated, as French writers frequently met with far greater support in England than at home. French Novels and the Victorians aims to shed new light on these relations by exploring the enormous impact of French fiction on the Victorian reading public. The work considers the many different ties built between the two countries in the publishing industry, identifying how French novels could be accessed and by whom, as well as who promoted and who resisted the importation of Continental works in England and why. The book reflects on what ‘immorality’ meant to both critics and the readers they sought to warn, and how the notion was subjected to scrutiny through censorship debates as well as the fictional representations of readers. It also tackles the contemporary preoccupation with literary influence, and explores how the extensive circulation of French fiction in England affected the concept of a ‘national’ literature. Rather than a study of the (considerable) influence of novelists such as Balzac, Hugo, Dumas, or Sand on individual works of English literature, this book uncovers the networks and mediums that enabled French novels to cross the Channel, and looks at how the concept of the ‘French novel’ was elaborated, interpreted, and challenged.Less
It has become common to build an opposition between prudish Victorian England and permissive nineteenth-century France. The lack of a full-length study of nineteenth-century Anglo-French literary relations means that both English reserve and French license have been greatly exaggerated, as French writers frequently met with far greater support in England than at home. French Novels and the Victorians aims to shed new light on these relations by exploring the enormous impact of French fiction on the Victorian reading public. The work considers the many different ties built between the two countries in the publishing industry, identifying how French novels could be accessed and by whom, as well as who promoted and who resisted the importation of Continental works in England and why. The book reflects on what ‘immorality’ meant to both critics and the readers they sought to warn, and how the notion was subjected to scrutiny through censorship debates as well as the fictional representations of readers. It also tackles the contemporary preoccupation with literary influence, and explores how the extensive circulation of French fiction in England affected the concept of a ‘national’ literature. Rather than a study of the (considerable) influence of novelists such as Balzac, Hugo, Dumas, or Sand on individual works of English literature, this book uncovers the networks and mediums that enabled French novels to cross the Channel, and looks at how the concept of the ‘French novel’ was elaborated, interpreted, and challenged.
William L Randall and A. Elizabeth McKim
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195306873
- eISBN:
- 9780199894062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306873.003.0003
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This chapter continues laying the conceptual groundwork for the rest of the book, where the focus is on aging, by discussing the formation of the self in explicitly narrative terms. The concept of ...
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This chapter continues laying the conceptual groundwork for the rest of the book, where the focus is on aging, by discussing the formation of the self in explicitly narrative terms. The concept of narrative environment is introduced, to refer to the larger contexts within which our personal stories are inevitably constructed — not just our families, friendships, and communities but such broad or master narratives as gender, politics, culture, and religion. The many environments we live within exercise a powerful influence — supportive or oppressive — on the direction of our narrative development, that is, on the development of our narrative identity: the internalized, ever-evolving lifestory, the faction by which we understand who we are. Identity is no once-and-for-all achievement, but a process of continuous “storying,” even in later life, that involves the paradoxical activity of self-as-author and self-as-reader of our own lived narratives.Less
This chapter continues laying the conceptual groundwork for the rest of the book, where the focus is on aging, by discussing the formation of the self in explicitly narrative terms. The concept of narrative environment is introduced, to refer to the larger contexts within which our personal stories are inevitably constructed — not just our families, friendships, and communities but such broad or master narratives as gender, politics, culture, and religion. The many environments we live within exercise a powerful influence — supportive or oppressive — on the direction of our narrative development, that is, on the development of our narrative identity: the internalized, ever-evolving lifestory, the faction by which we understand who we are. Identity is no once-and-for-all achievement, but a process of continuous “storying,” even in later life, that involves the paradoxical activity of self-as-author and self-as-reader of our own lived narratives.
William L Randall and A. Elizabeth McKim
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195306873
- eISBN:
- 9780199894062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306873.003.0004
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This chapter discusses the nature of reading from the perspectives of both psychology and literary theory. Research into the cognitive and neurological features of reading indicates that we process ...
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This chapter discusses the nature of reading from the perspectives of both psychology and literary theory. Research into the cognitive and neurological features of reading indicates that we process written text in much the same way as we process day-to-day experience. In their analyses of reader-response, literary theorists insist that reading is a constructive process, and that a text's meaning depends as much on the reader's interpretation as on the author's intention. Awareness of this process, and of the fact that every text is thus an open text, is necessary for gaining literary competence. Such awareness has been labeled by Louise Rosenblatt as “aesthetic reading,” in opposition to “efferent reading,” which locates meaning only in the text. The chapter argues that reading literature can aid us in reading life, as claimed by proponents of bibliotherapy. Moreover, understanding the process of reading can contribute to the acquisition of literary self-literacy.Less
This chapter discusses the nature of reading from the perspectives of both psychology and literary theory. Research into the cognitive and neurological features of reading indicates that we process written text in much the same way as we process day-to-day experience. In their analyses of reader-response, literary theorists insist that reading is a constructive process, and that a text's meaning depends as much on the reader's interpretation as on the author's intention. Awareness of this process, and of the fact that every text is thus an open text, is necessary for gaining literary competence. Such awareness has been labeled by Louise Rosenblatt as “aesthetic reading,” in opposition to “efferent reading,” which locates meaning only in the text. The chapter argues that reading literature can aid us in reading life, as claimed by proponents of bibliotherapy. Moreover, understanding the process of reading can contribute to the acquisition of literary self-literacy.
John Barton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265420
- eISBN:
- 9780191760471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265420.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Readers of ancient texts often assume that they are looking for the meaning intended by the author. Trends in modern literary theory, from the ‘New Criticism’ to structuralism and postmodern ...
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Readers of ancient texts often assume that they are looking for the meaning intended by the author. Trends in modern literary theory, from the ‘New Criticism’ to structuralism and postmodern deconstruction, have called this into question. In its place readers look either for meanings supposedly inherent to the text regardless of the author's intention, or for meanings attributable to the text through creative ‘readings’, without any implication that the text has a ‘real’ meaning. Theorising of this kind has been more typical of the study of modern literature than of ancient texts, but the fact that so much ancient writing is anonymous or pseudonymous might make it an even more suitable case for a literary-theoretical treatment. However, such reading can produce meanings that are completely arbitrary. The work of Umberto Eco can provide a middle way between a textual determinism and total arbitrariness, through his concept of the intentio operis.Less
Readers of ancient texts often assume that they are looking for the meaning intended by the author. Trends in modern literary theory, from the ‘New Criticism’ to structuralism and postmodern deconstruction, have called this into question. In its place readers look either for meanings supposedly inherent to the text regardless of the author's intention, or for meanings attributable to the text through creative ‘readings’, without any implication that the text has a ‘real’ meaning. Theorising of this kind has been more typical of the study of modern literature than of ancient texts, but the fact that so much ancient writing is anonymous or pseudonymous might make it an even more suitable case for a literary-theoretical treatment. However, such reading can produce meanings that are completely arbitrary. The work of Umberto Eco can provide a middle way between a textual determinism and total arbitrariness, through his concept of the intentio operis.
Ludwig D. Morenz
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265420
- eISBN:
- 9780191760471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265420.003.0012
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter discusses aspects of Egyptian ‘fine literature’ (belles-lettres), and combines general literary and cultural-scientific theoretical considerations with specific case studies from both ...
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This chapter discusses aspects of Egyptian ‘fine literature’ (belles-lettres), and combines general literary and cultural-scientific theoretical considerations with specific case studies from both Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian literature. It addresses questions of form and function, producers and recipients, as well as discussing the search for empirical readers. Also discussed are the question of original manuscripts and the potential significance of writing errors.Less
This chapter discusses aspects of Egyptian ‘fine literature’ (belles-lettres), and combines general literary and cultural-scientific theoretical considerations with specific case studies from both Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian literature. It addresses questions of form and function, producers and recipients, as well as discussing the search for empirical readers. Also discussed are the question of original manuscripts and the potential significance of writing errors.
Jack Stillinger
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195130225
- eISBN:
- 9780199855209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195130225.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter continues the discussion on the reasons for the diversity of interpretations for any complex literary piece. It tackles the other half of the reader–work transaction—the actual body of ...
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This chapter continues the discussion on the reasons for the diversity of interpretations for any complex literary piece. It tackles the other half of the reader–work transaction—the actual body of work—with particular focus on its authorship. The author’s actual intent is usually ambiguous and practically unrecoverable, which is exemplified in John Keats’s comments on his practice of “intentionless spontaneity” in his compositions. Nevertheless, to exclude the author in determining the meaning of his work would render the interpretation incomplete. Also, the author’s hand in the creation of the work is “visible” in the many little cues that exist throughout the text of any manuscript. Thus, the “reader-response-based theory of multiple interpretation” proposed in the previous chapter is further enriched with the inclusion of the author and the text as major elements. The remaining section discusses Keats and the various indicators of meaning embedded in the poem’s text.Less
This chapter continues the discussion on the reasons for the diversity of interpretations for any complex literary piece. It tackles the other half of the reader–work transaction—the actual body of work—with particular focus on its authorship. The author’s actual intent is usually ambiguous and practically unrecoverable, which is exemplified in John Keats’s comments on his practice of “intentionless spontaneity” in his compositions. Nevertheless, to exclude the author in determining the meaning of his work would render the interpretation incomplete. Also, the author’s hand in the creation of the work is “visible” in the many little cues that exist throughout the text of any manuscript. Thus, the “reader-response-based theory of multiple interpretation” proposed in the previous chapter is further enriched with the inclusion of the author and the text as major elements. The remaining section discusses Keats and the various indicators of meaning embedded in the poem’s text.
GREGORY CURRIE
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264195
- eISBN:
- 9780191734540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264195.003.0008
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter discusses the impact of narratives on the imaginative faculties of the readers. Imaginative engagement with a narrative has two aspects: what is to be imagined from the narratives and ...
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This chapter discusses the impact of narratives on the imaginative faculties of the readers. Imaginative engagement with a narrative has two aspects: what is to be imagined from the narratives and how it is imagined. The second aspect requires the notion of a point of view wherein readers imagine the events of the story from a certain vantage point, which involves eliciting certain kinds of responses to the events and to the characters who act them out. Narratives have the capacity to prescribe a certain point of view just as they are able to enforce what is to be imagined. This capacity to prescribe specific point of view is done not through explicit direction but rather through the expressive nature of the narratives. In this chapter, the focus is on the many relevant factors that motivate the readers to imitate or adopt the point of view offered by the authors or the narratives. It examines the tendency of readers to respond imitatively to their own imaginative construction of the author’s mind.Less
This chapter discusses the impact of narratives on the imaginative faculties of the readers. Imaginative engagement with a narrative has two aspects: what is to be imagined from the narratives and how it is imagined. The second aspect requires the notion of a point of view wherein readers imagine the events of the story from a certain vantage point, which involves eliciting certain kinds of responses to the events and to the characters who act them out. Narratives have the capacity to prescribe a certain point of view just as they are able to enforce what is to be imagined. This capacity to prescribe specific point of view is done not through explicit direction but rather through the expressive nature of the narratives. In this chapter, the focus is on the many relevant factors that motivate the readers to imitate or adopt the point of view offered by the authors or the narratives. It examines the tendency of readers to respond imitatively to their own imaginative construction of the author’s mind.
Emily Baragwanath
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199231294
- eISBN:
- 9780191710797
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231294.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Herodotus sought to communicate not only what happened, but also the background of thoughts and perceptions that shaped those events and was also critical to their interpretation in retrospect. This ...
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Herodotus sought to communicate not only what happened, but also the background of thoughts and perceptions that shaped those events and was also critical to their interpretation in retrospect. This book examines the representation of human motivation in Herodotus' Histories, building on recent work that views the historian against the background of the sophists and exploring the implications of this for the Histories' narrative books. Working from the theoretical basis of reader response criticism, it uses Plutarch's insights to plot Herodotus' narrative strategies for guiding his readers' response to questions of motives. Its focus is the sophisticated narrative techniques with which Herodotus represents this elusive variety of historical knowledge; but through illustrating and analyzing a range of such techniques across a wide selection of narratives, it supplies a method for reading the Histories more generally. Herodotus is revealed as a master of both narrative and historiography, able tell a lucid story of the past while nonetheless exposing the methodological and epistemological challenges it presented. Subjects discussed include the influence of Homer as a narrative model; the account of Leonidas and Thermopylae—where the subtle interweaving of heroic and more pragmatic motivations contribute to the historian's self-characterization; the Samian and Persian stories, with their depiction of irrational motivation; the Athenian stories, which reveal Herodotus' polarizing technique of presentation; the complications of rhetoric, with its slogans of ‘freedom’ and ‘Greek unity’, in the Ionian Revolt narrative—which proves a touchstone for assessing the later campaign; motives and necessity in the Greek states' response to the Persian threat; and the characterization of the Histories' most prominent individuals, Xerxes and Themistocles.Less
Herodotus sought to communicate not only what happened, but also the background of thoughts and perceptions that shaped those events and was also critical to their interpretation in retrospect. This book examines the representation of human motivation in Herodotus' Histories, building on recent work that views the historian against the background of the sophists and exploring the implications of this for the Histories' narrative books. Working from the theoretical basis of reader response criticism, it uses Plutarch's insights to plot Herodotus' narrative strategies for guiding his readers' response to questions of motives. Its focus is the sophisticated narrative techniques with which Herodotus represents this elusive variety of historical knowledge; but through illustrating and analyzing a range of such techniques across a wide selection of narratives, it supplies a method for reading the Histories more generally. Herodotus is revealed as a master of both narrative and historiography, able tell a lucid story of the past while nonetheless exposing the methodological and epistemological challenges it presented. Subjects discussed include the influence of Homer as a narrative model; the account of Leonidas and Thermopylae—where the subtle interweaving of heroic and more pragmatic motivations contribute to the historian's self-characterization; the Samian and Persian stories, with their depiction of irrational motivation; the Athenian stories, which reveal Herodotus' polarizing technique of presentation; the complications of rhetoric, with its slogans of ‘freedom’ and ‘Greek unity’, in the Ionian Revolt narrative—which proves a touchstone for assessing the later campaign; motives and necessity in the Greek states' response to the Persian threat; and the characterization of the Histories' most prominent individuals, Xerxes and Themistocles.
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816696895
- eISBN:
- 9781452952369
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816696895.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This new translation of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques, first published in 1874, aims to re-introduce Barbey to Anglophone readers. The six stories are highly dramatic, psychologically intense ...
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This new translation of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques, first published in 1874, aims to re-introduce Barbey to Anglophone readers. The six stories are highly dramatic, psychologically intense and extreme in both subject matter and style, reflecting Barbey’s unique sensibility. The stories combine horror, comedy, and irony in disturbing and memorable ways, but they are also thematically probing, especially in their indictment of what Barbey saw as a soulless and oppressive modernity. Barbey evolved a richly poetic aesthetic to battle the modern bent toward scientism, positivism, and commodification. This translation seeks to find an analogue in English for Barbey’s complex style. Barbey blends elements associated with the oral tale-teller, something like Leskov, with the highly literary, allusive qualities of a more elite writer like Henry James. His sentences blend the qualities of the spoken word with suddenly labyrinthine structures, embeddings, and digressions. The style mirrors the man’s sensibility, and the translation endeavors to do both justice.Less
This new translation of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques, first published in 1874, aims to re-introduce Barbey to Anglophone readers. The six stories are highly dramatic, psychologically intense and extreme in both subject matter and style, reflecting Barbey’s unique sensibility. The stories combine horror, comedy, and irony in disturbing and memorable ways, but they are also thematically probing, especially in their indictment of what Barbey saw as a soulless and oppressive modernity. Barbey evolved a richly poetic aesthetic to battle the modern bent toward scientism, positivism, and commodification. This translation seeks to find an analogue in English for Barbey’s complex style. Barbey blends elements associated with the oral tale-teller, something like Leskov, with the highly literary, allusive qualities of a more elite writer like Henry James. His sentences blend the qualities of the spoken word with suddenly labyrinthine structures, embeddings, and digressions. The style mirrors the man’s sensibility, and the translation endeavors to do both justice.
Emily Baragwanath
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199231294
- eISBN:
- 9780191710797
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231294.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Moving from Plutarch's accusation that Herodotus is too fond of polarizing questions of motivation into better and worse, and emphasizing the latter, this chapter considers cases of alternative ...
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Moving from Plutarch's accusation that Herodotus is too fond of polarizing questions of motivation into better and worse, and emphasizing the latter, this chapter considers cases of alternative accounts in the Histories where the alternative possibilities relate to questions of motivation. It reviews those where the double explanations do not represent true alternatives; where they are genuine but no ethical judgment attaches to a particular choice; and where the alternatives are indeed morally weighted (e.g. principled versus pragmatic)—as in the case-studies of the Athenians' expulsion of the Pelasgians and failure to expel the Peisistratids. Reader response is not simply a matter, then, of making an autonomous choice between alternatives, but of observing a complex skein of possible motivations and their possible resolutions. Herodotus' presentation implies that polarized views of motivation do not reflect complex realities.Less
Moving from Plutarch's accusation that Herodotus is too fond of polarizing questions of motivation into better and worse, and emphasizing the latter, this chapter considers cases of alternative accounts in the Histories where the alternative possibilities relate to questions of motivation. It reviews those where the double explanations do not represent true alternatives; where they are genuine but no ethical judgment attaches to a particular choice; and where the alternatives are indeed morally weighted (e.g. principled versus pragmatic)—as in the case-studies of the Athenians' expulsion of the Pelasgians and failure to expel the Peisistratids. Reader response is not simply a matter, then, of making an autonomous choice between alternatives, but of observing a complex skein of possible motivations and their possible resolutions. Herodotus' presentation implies that polarized views of motivation do not reflect complex realities.
Emily Baragwanath
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199231294
- eISBN:
- 9780191710797
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231294.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter addresses Herodotus' presentation of Themistocles' motives, taking as a test case the general's rhetoric and conduct at Andros (9.109-110) and after. It reconsiders the possibility of ...
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This chapter addresses Herodotus' presentation of Themistocles' motives, taking as a test case the general's rhetoric and conduct at Andros (9.109-110) and after. It reconsiders the possibility of unreliable narratorial comments and the effect of these in eliciting reader response, particularly through the production of shifting perspectives. Herodotus' presentation recalls subsequent history and contemporary - late 5th-century - politics, for example in reflecting sophistic/democratic processes. While underlining the importance of original readers' contemporary experience in interpreting the Histories, the chapter brings out how the narrative in turn exposes the role played by later events in the retrospective fashioning of motivation. It again underlines the complexity of Herodotus' presentation and how it opens up different interpretative possibilities, highlighting the historian's broad intellectual and historiographical—rather than more narrowly political—concerns.Less
This chapter addresses Herodotus' presentation of Themistocles' motives, taking as a test case the general's rhetoric and conduct at Andros (9.109-110) and after. It reconsiders the possibility of unreliable narratorial comments and the effect of these in eliciting reader response, particularly through the production of shifting perspectives. Herodotus' presentation recalls subsequent history and contemporary - late 5th-century - politics, for example in reflecting sophistic/democratic processes. While underlining the importance of original readers' contemporary experience in interpreting the Histories, the chapter brings out how the narrative in turn exposes the role played by later events in the retrospective fashioning of motivation. It again underlines the complexity of Herodotus' presentation and how it opens up different interpretative possibilities, highlighting the historian's broad intellectual and historiographical—rather than more narrowly political—concerns.
