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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.

This is the second of six chapters on the Old Testament and its authors. It discusses prophecy and the prophetic books of the Old Testament starting by pointing out that not much has been added to the non‐biblical data bearing on the phenomenon of prophecy in ancient Israel since the 1979 study of the prophetic literature by W. McKane. The aspects of the subject addressed in Sect. I include the danger of form‐critical positivism and the problematic nature of the passage from text to prophetic realia (McKane), B. S. Child's advocacy of interpretation in the context of canon, reader response theory and prophetic terminology. Section II looks at the social‐scientific approach to prophecy, and Sect. III looks at the process by which prophetic books and the prophetic corpus as a whole reached the form in which they are now available. Section IV discusses the early Second Temple period, and the last section of the chapter looks at one of the most contentious issues in the study of the prophetic texts—the relation between prophecy and law.

Chapter 1 examines the possibility of whether or not the Mahābhārata contains an implicit literary theory that can be “lifted out” of its aesthetics of suffering. This chapter discusses three theoretical resources—namely Sanskrit literary theory, reader-response theory, and narrative ethics—that are used to identify and articulate the broader ideas about how literature works that are embedded in the Mahābhārata’s aesthetics of suffering. The discussion is weighted heavily toward Sanskrit literary theory, and the ideas of the ninth-century literary theorist Ānandavardhana in particular. Specifically, this chapter focuses on three aesthetic categories that are borrowed from Ānanda, namely dhvani or “meaning-without-saying” or “suggestion”; sahṛdaya, or “the sensitive reader/spectator”; and rasa or “aestheticized emotion.” By showing how these categories help one to locate meaning in the Mahābhārata, this chapter points to the enormous interpretive potential that could be opened up by bringing such concepts to bear on other works of religious and literary art, South Asian and beyond.

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.

The emotional experience of reading a novel is itself educational, teaching us about life and morality. However, emotional learning is not just a matter of making reflective judgements or acquiring beliefs about the characters and events portrayed, but of making affective appraisals of important events, having our attention focused on these events in a bodily way, and reflecting upon them after the fact. This chapter contains a detailed reading of Edith Wharton's The Reef, in which these themes are explored and illustrated. It also defends the version of ‘reader-response theory’ that underpins the discussion.

This chapter explores Smith's construction of a reading figure in her three novels. It examines how the addresses to the reader develop through Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) and Over the Frontier (1938), considers the importance of letter-writing and autobiographical texts in her fiction, and traces the impact of her literary success on her representations of the reading process. It notes the significance of overlooked reading acts in her novels with reference to the Panopticon prison, and discusses the importance of surveillance, punishment, and spectatorship in her oeuvre.

In the Introduction I briefly indicate how the form and content of Rousseau’s philosophical writings are related, and specifically how they speak to the fundamental principle of all his works, the natural goodness of man and his corruption in society, and the challenge he faces as an author trying to persuade the reader of the truth of this principle. Although a philosopher concerned with the truth, Rousseau must also engage in rhetoric in order to persuade and educate the reader. I place Rousseau within a tradition of protreptic rhetoric within philosophy, that is philosophic works meant to transform the understanding of the reader through persuasion, most importantly stemming from Plato’s dialogues and particularly Phaedrus, which will be a continual reference point in my study of Rousseau. I then present what I term a “methodological manifesto” in which I sketch my exegetical strategy, which combines traditional textual exegesis as practiced in philosophy and political theory with literary criticism, and in particular reader response theory and its treatment of the author-reader dialogue.

This chapter explores Smith's own reading practice to help explain her playful and often hostile relationship with tradition. It focuses on her troubled relationship with her sister, an English literature scholar, and considers its impact on both her attitudes to reading and her literary tastes. It traces this sibling antagonism through to her 1920s reading notebooks and eventually to her own book reviews, which often served as defensive gestures towards her projected reading public. It concludes by noting Smith's deliberate concealment of her own literary influences in essays, interviews, and public appearances.

This chapter considers the construction of Smith's public persona in her relation to her critical reception. It notes the defensive and protective critical stances often taken on Smith's work, examines the notion of misreading with reference to the marketing and reception of Smith's work in the 1930s, and traces this through to contemporary responses by feminist and poststructuralist critics. The chapter explores Smith's correspondence with agents, readers, and reviewers throughout her career, notes that her self-written blurbs deliberately worked to offset the current critical consensus, and focuses on Smith's self-construction in interviews and public appearances.

This essay stresses the pleasure created by Welty’s nonfulfillment of readers’ expectations. It models how to steer students to enjoy the swerves in four short stories– “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies,” “A Memory,” “Powerhouse,” and “The Wide Net”–as a lesson to take forward to other of her fictions. Drawing on reader response theory, it considers the interactions between reader and writer in the interpretative process and identifies Welty’s signature modernist techniques for guiding a reader, artistic maneuvers that make use of a reader's literary memory and competence while creating delight by veering from literary convention. Techniques discussed include Welty’s characteristic play with point of view and focalization, with plot and detail, with allusion and genre, as well as with humor, parody, and with “the female swerve,” –-a woman's dissident revoicing of literary history's familiar narratives.

This chapter examines in detail Péguy’s turn towards literature, when in the context of his ‘Dialogue with History’ he questioned the validity of positivist historicism and its ability to describe the ‘living material’ of the past, of which literature is a paradigmatic example. Reading literature became for Péguy an act of trans-temporal understanding, an experiential hermeneutics by which truths are passed from author to audience through the mediation of the literary work. It was at this point that Péguy’s literary thought coalesced with his ‘intuitive’ philosophy of history, one that seeks to re-experience the living past in duration. Gleaned from Bergson and inspired by the creative historiography of Jules Michelet, Péguy’s notion of historical understanding is that of a creative ‘rememoration’ that allows great works of the past to transcend the limits of objective historicism.