Gender and Narrative Form

Abstract

The practice of responding to texts stands at the heart of the student’s learning experience on an undergraduate degree in English studies. Despite its critical status, analysing reader response is less than easy and might involve any number of influential factors. Early studies in feminist literary criticism considered the role that a reader’s gender might play in textual response, and how practices of reading might entail a political (specifically feminist) dimension.2 Now, some 20 years on, there is still some way to go in addressing questions of gender and reader response. As Johnson points out, changes in language and gender research have challenged the focus on the study of women alone to incorporate analysing the construction of masculinities.3 The kind of texts that readers might encounter both within and outside their academic study is also shifting, with the evolution of digital culture.