Abstract
Snagsby's paper shop inBleak House(1853) deals in “all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper—foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tape, and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacks, diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands—glass and leaden, penknives, scissors, bodkins, and other small office cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention.” While one might imagine this stifling bookish environment as especially inviting for an object-oriented reading, this passage has recently attracted what I might call a newly inflected kind of subject-oriented reading. This description fromBleak Housemakes an appearance in two recent critical monographs concerned with how the reader's cognitive capabilities meet words on the page to transform them into a felt reality. How does a passage like this act on our minds, creating mental images or offering a sense of embeddedness in an unreal “reality”? How does fiction become phenomenological?
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
