Reader-response Criticism Research Articles

Tennessee Williams’ Awareness of Feminist Issues in A Streetcar Named Desire —From Readers to Ideal Readers

On the one side, as a male, Tennessee Williams showed a strong awareness on feminist issues because of his special personal experience, which can be proved by his many plays portraying women. On the other side, he expressed admiration to the muscular beauty of men. A Streetcar Named Desire can be seen as a play to display the conflict in Williams’ mind and to demonstrate his deep sympathy to women. By constructing the confrontation between hero and heroine, Tennessee succeeded guiding readers to the ideal readers to share what in his mind. In this thesis, the author will use the theory of Reader-Response Criticism to explore Tennessee’s awareness on feminist issues, and display how he converted the real readers to the ideal ones step by step.

Decoding Byzantine ekphraseis on works of art. Constantine Manasses’s description of earth and its audience

Abstract The study deals with ekphraseis on works of art and poses the question as to how far these texts can be a reliable source for the study or even the reconstruction of the artefacts they describe. Based on reception theory and readerresponse criticism, in the paper is proposed that as every text, byzantine ekphraseis on artworks presuppose an audience or readership, i. e. the one the author had in mind and on the basis of which he encoded his message. In order to decode this message and by extension to extract any information about the described works of art we must aim to discover their “intended reader”, and identify his or her “horizon of expectations. This proposal is tested in the study of a well known piece of this kind, Manasses’s description of a mosaic floor with a depiction of Earth. The author’s dialogue with the earlier tradition of ekphraseis, his readership’s “horizon of expectations” combined with historical facts, allow us to suppose that Manasses is describing a composition with Xenia scenes and an asarotos motif (unswept floor) created in the early byzantine period and preserved in the Great Palace of Constantinople up to the twelfth century.

АВТОРСЬКА НАРАТИВНА СТРАТЕГІЯ В І КНИЗІ ТВОРУ КСЕНОФОНТА “ВИХОВАННЯ КІРА”

The article deals with the text of the book I of Xenophon’s “Cyropaedia”. A brief description of the most significant previous studies of the “Cyropaedia” as a literary work is given. The text is analyzed within the frames of narratology and reader-response criticism. The theoretical base of these approaches is shown concisely in the beginning of the article. The notions of narrator (primary, secondary, tertiary), narratee, author, reader, ideal recipient, pre-intent, lacuna, peripeteia, golden section, lingual strategy, narrative strategy are being defined as the main notions of the present investigation. The study of the author’s narrative strategy supposes a distinction between authorial and narratorial communication with its further comparison. The analysis of a double-structured communication is possible thanks to the study of the given fragment [Cyrop. I.4.27]. It draws the attention because it is unusual if compared with the rest of the book I, the narratorial communication lacks logics in this very fragment. The assumption that the fragment could be a key for understanding the authorial communication is proved by the analysis of the whole book I within the frames of narratology and reader-response criticism. Finding lacunas in reader’s reception of the text as well as observation of their place and role in each case allows to conclude that [Cyrop. I.4.27] is a cornerstone of the whole book I of the “Cyropaedia”. The lacuna this fragment provides to the reader ruins absolutely the image of Cyrus, which the author of narration tries to persuade us to be real. It is proved that the present fragment is, in addition, a moment of peripeteia and of golden section it the structure of the book I which is similar to that of the ancient tragedy. The conclusions of the present article give way to a thorough narratological analysis of the whole “Cyporaedia” of Xenophon.

The Reception of Antiquity in “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë

The following paper concentrates on the reception of antiquity in the novel by Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights. The primary concept of the analysis is to exploit such critical tools as: Reader-Response Criticism, dialogics and transtextuality. In this context one can notice such ancient references as: the structure of a labyrinth (prefiguration), the archetype of Hercules, Apollo and gods, as well as the reference to learning ancient languages (revocation). All the references to antiquity are used in the novel in question not only as ornaments, but mainly as the tools to comment on, among others, the social situation in Victorian England.

Sherwood Andersona okur-odaklı yaklaşım: Death in the Woods

With its revolutionary new styles, modernist literature assigns to the reader a new role and responsibility which obliges him to be an active participant in the understanding and production of meaning in the text; a role explained mainly by the reader-response theory. The following article entitled “A Reader-Response Approach to Sherwood Anderson: Death in the Woods” presents an interpretation of the American writer Sherwood Anderson‟s short story Death in theWoods in the light of reader-response criticism which prompts the reader for his active participation in reading a text. In general, the short story takes the reader to the insignificant life of a woman victimized by the patriarchal society. However, she does gain significance after her death, when her dead body becomes a text to be perceived and contrastingly interpreted from the different perspectives of different people.

La réception du témoignage à l’épreuve du silence. L’aîné des orphelins de Tierno Monénembo

From the perspective of the reader-response criticism, this article underlines the ethical and esthetical tension between the duty of memory and the unspeakable in the context of the project « Rwanda : écrire par devoir de mémoire » and specificly in the novel L’aîné des orphelins by Tierno Monénembo. Although the « horizon » of expectations typical to the commitment toward the duty of memory is reinforced by the peritext (Genette, 1987), Monembo’s novel challenges the reader’s expectations by silencing and delaying the personnal story of young narrator-survivor Faustin.This stepback from direct violence allows the novel to focus on structual forms of violence (Galtung 2010) and urges the public to question his responsability in the testimonial reception.

“Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner?” The “Case of Jauss”

Hans Robert Jauss cannot simply be excluded from the history of Romance Studies, or from the history of literary science in 20th century Germany: the attractive power of his style of thought, writing and scholarship was too profound, his machine de guerre too powerful. If the “case of Jauss” is now on its way to becoming the “paradigm of Jauss,” it is time to examine scientifically the text and work, the impact and the reception of the author of Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik (“Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics”), and to illuminate them from the perspective of Romance Studies. The considerations put forth in this essay should in no way diminish the undeniable merits of the founder of “Reader-response criticism”. With him and with his words, one may surely hold on to the hope that “the triadic relationship of technology, communication, and world view” can be brought “once more into equilibrium.” Hans Robert Jauss—to use the words of Jorge Semprún—traveled the very short, and at the same time very long, path from Buchenwald to Weimar: a path that first led him into the most abysmal, reprehensible, and rational form of human barbarism, which he wished to leave behind him as quickly as possible after the end of the war. His path to Weimar, as the symbol of a “refined” western culture, was extremely short: indeed, all too short.

Reader response research in stylistics

This article introduces the special issue. In it, we argue that research into reader response should be recognised as a vital aspect of contemporary stylistics, and we establish our focus on work which explicitly investigates such responses through the collection and analysis of extra-textual datasets. Reader response research in stylistics is characterised by a commitment to rigorous and evidence-based approaches to the study of readers’ interactions with and around texts, and the application of such datasets in the service of stylistic concerns, to contribute to stylistic textual analysis and/or wider discussion of stylistic theory and methods. We trace the influence of reader response criticism and reception theory on stylistics and discuss the productive dialogues which exist between stylistics and the related fields of the empirical study of literature and naturalistic study of reading. After offering an overview of methods available to reader response researchers and a contextualising survey of existing work, we argue that both experimental and naturalistic methods should be regarded as ‘empirical’, and that stylistics is uniquely positioned to embrace diverse approaches to readers and reading. We summarise contributions to the special issue and the valuable insights they offer into the historical context of reader response research and the way readers perceive and evaluate texts (either poetry or narrative prose). Stylistic reader response research enables both the testing and development of stylistic methods, in accordance with the progressive spirit of the discipline, and also the establishment of new and renewed connections between stylistic research and work in other fields.

O coração das trevas: relato de uma alteridade silenciada

Heart of darkness , by Joseph Conrad, is a narrative full of gaps, which may be interpreted by the reader in different ways. These gaps involve both what is silenced by the narrative and the darkness which is impenetrable by the eyes of the narrator. Therefore, literary criticism, based on different views, has applied its characteristic looks towards these gaps, and thus discovered many ways of reading Conrad’s text. This work aims at exposing different ways to interpret the unspoken and unfathomable based on different contemporary theories of literature: Deconstruction, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Reader-Response Criticism and New Historicism. In order to do this, essays by J. Hillis Miller, Frederick R. Karl, Ross C. Murfin, Adena Rosmarin and Brook Thomas, present in the collection Heart of darkness: a case study in contemporary criticism , edited by Ross C. Murfin, are used as theoretical reference. We intend to demonstrate how the different perspectives, taken together, support the relativity of the interpretation, while they affirm the impossibility of a full understanding, by the ‘civilized European’, of the meaning of the narrative he weaves about the culture he intends to master.

Palladius of Helenopolis: One Author, Two Ways to Write

The present article analyzes the narrative strategies and discursive conventions that Palladius of Hellenopolis employed in his works, the Dialogue and the Lausiac History, and proposes the reasons why one author could produce two such disparate works. I use the concepts and approaches offered by reader-response criticism in order to differentiate between an implied audience of the historical narrative as the narrative itself mediates it, and the historical audience, i.e., real people of flesh and blood who read the book in the past. The ways in which Palladius chose to present certain topics (the attitude to wisdom and foolishness, eschatological expectations, the appearance of righteous men, male and female ascetics living together, and the attitude to pride) are important indicators of how he envisioned the audiences of the Dialogue and the Lausiac History, and that, to a larger extent, accounts for the impression of the remarkable difference between the two works. An attempt is made to correlate these implied audiences with the diverse groups in Palladius's immediate milieu and to hypothesize about the real first-hand readers of his works, who were ready and willing to internalize his assumptions and expectations.

Seriality and Susanna Rowson's <em>Sincerity</em>

Seriality and Susanna Rowson's Sincerity Karen A. Weyler What makes a work teachable? How do we prepare students to read early American authors and genres when virtually everything we will teach in such a course will be unfamiliar to them? Sheridan Blau, in The Literature Workshop, argues that one of the secrets to engaging teaching is providing enough context so that students can comprehend a work, without offering so much that we substitute lecture for student engagement and discovery. He uses the example of Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." With direct knowledge of World War II receding into the distant past, this splendid poem hovers on the edge of legibility for many students; absent knowledge that men operating machine guns were confined to the claustrophobic spaces of a ball turret for the duration of an airplane flight, students produce wildly creative but ultimately frustrating misinterpretations of "wet fur" and "black flak" (qtd. in Blau 191).1 With this question of context in mind, how can we prepare students to read early serial fiction? And perhaps even more to the point, why would we want to teach serial fiction, when there are perfectly good reprint editions of early American novels that provide, in a single volume, the kind of textual infrastructure to which our students are accustomed: a unified, coherent text; footnotes; chronologies; author biographies; critical responses; and the like. In reading serial fiction, we give up these conveniences and create conditions that encourage students to teach themselves and to apply knowledge they have acquired in other contexts. Susanna Rowson's 1803–4 novel Sincerity dramatically and memorably animates the persistent inequalities faced by women and poor people in Anglo-American culture and the physical, social, and mental costs of living up to unattainable early-nineteenth-century feminine ideals. Moreover, teaching Sincerity as a text-in-parts encourages students to engage in metacognitive thinking about their reading experiences: it encourages them to think beyond the plot and reflect on reading as a process. Our class discussions thus oscillated between two central issues: interpreting how parts of Sincerity were embedded within multiple contexts, and interpreting how temporalities of reading shape interpretation. In this essay I will first explore why the novel-as-material-book has held a privileged status in American literary studies and what we might gain by moving beyond that model; then I will discuss how [End Page 162] teaching Sincerity with an emphasis on seriality facilitated student engagement in primary research and encouraged them to bring their own experiences as consumers of serial works to bear upon an early American literary text. privileging the book Scholars of British literature have historically been more attentive than scholars of American literature to the serial publication of long fiction, particularly with respect to Charles Dickens's work in magazines and standalone serials and to the triple-decker novels that were so popular among private subscription-based circulating libraries. By contrast, the serial novel receiving the greatest attention in nineteenth-century US literature is Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, even though that text is more likely to be discussed as a unified novel than as a serial. Fiction in serial format formed an essential component of post-Revolutionary magazine culture. As Jared Gardner has pointed out, the two most prolific novelists of the early republic, Susanna Rowson and Charles Brockden Brown, ended their careers writing not standalone novels but periodical pieces, as did Isaiah Thomas and Judith Sargent Murray (140–41). The largely anonymous, more responsive, and more democratic form of the magazine clearly appealed to writers as well as readers. Why, then, has early US serial fiction—specifically early-nineteenth-century magazine fiction—received markedly less attention than its British counterparts? This critical lacuna has been created partly by technological factors and by the reciprocal relationship between teaching and literary scholarship in the field of American literature. For most of the twentieth century, early American sentimental fiction—and it is fair to assert that while sentimentality is not the only mode in early American fiction, it predominates—was dismissed as sub-literary. The rise of feminist criticism, reader-response criticism, New Historicism, and...

The Value of Peace and the Acts of Women of the Old Testament from the Migrational Perspective

This study seeks the applicable value for contemporary multiculturalism based on the women (Hagar, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, A great woman who lives in Shunem, A nameless servant girl) of the Old Testament who experienced migration. The article critiques uses of scripture that emphasize the roles of the women in the household. It provides a new interpretation through the perspective of feminist criticism, narrative criticism, and reader-response criticism. The article introduces the examples of six migrant women who created peace with people around them through their positive roles despite the fact that women had limited function under patriarchal society at that time. It suggests, while recognizing the difference regarding race, gender, and class between migrants and non-migrants, women and men, that they should not be used as the tools of discrimination. Furthermore, through these women from the Bible, the reader may find role models of independent women who are working for peace and social justice. Received (May 4, 2016), Review Result (May 19, 2016) Accepted (May 26, 2016), Published (July 31, 2016) Instructor, Paichai Univ., Doma-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon, Korea email: tanak39@naver.com * 이 논문은 한국연구재단 과제(2012S1A5B5A07036388)의 지원으로 작성되었습니다. The Value of Peace and the Acts of Women of the Old Testament from the Migrational Perspective Copyright c 2016 HSST 322 Keyword: Immigration, Women of the Old Testament, Feminist Theology, Peace, Multiculturalism

Normative Aesthetics: The Ideal Audience and Art Education

Reader-Response Criticism proposes a new way of looking at literary text. One of the writers of this criticism discusses about 'literary competence' which entails the idea of 'ideal reader'. The writer proposes the idea of 'ideal audience' to work with fields of art other than literature. In an attempt to give the proper appreciation of art, norms are required, and norms in art can be arrived at using the concept of 'ideal audience'. It is a fact that norms are normally contextual, not universal, and change according to the change in the concept of art creation. Then the question is why take the trouble of forming norms if they keep changing?

ERROR CORRECTION, FEEDBACK, AND ACTION RESEARCH IN AMERICAN LITERATURE CLASSROOM: WHY NOT?

Error correction and feedback are two indispensable factors in shaping literature technique and theory. In this case, these techniques were applied to students who took American Multicultural Literature at College of Languages, UNISSULA Semarang. The students were asked to make any literary criticism toward several literary works from different cultural backgrounds. Both teacher and students have significant roles in those preferences. If teacher and students both understand the purpose of certain correction techniques and agree their use, feedback is more likely to be productive. This article also covers action research by using two cycles. It finds that students can improve their capabilities and skills in writing of an intellectual diary. It can be seen from the result of observation both test-1 and test-2 which had the progress in index from 0.45 to 0.52. Hence collaborative writing and reader-response criticism has given great contribution toward students’ motivation in learning American literature.

Discovering Matthew: Content, Interpretation, Reception by Ian Boxall

Reviewed by: Discovering Matthew: Content, Interpretation, Reception by Ian Boxall James Cuénod Boxall, Ian. 2014. Discovering Matthew: Content, Interpretation, Reception. London: SPCK. Paperback. ISBN 978-0802872388. Pp. 206. $22. For centuries, Matthew was truly the first gospel. It is the only Synoptic to claim apostolic authorship and it was long held to have been the first written. Of the four gospels, Matthew’s is preferred by the patristics for citation; harmonisations most commonly defer to the Matthean witness; and the Gospel of Matthew was seen as the source used by both Mark and Luke. This priority has all but disintegrated in the past century as Marcan priority has largely won the day. Even as the tide of contemporary scholarship has shifted to labelling Matthew the second gospel, its significance to the church through history remains unquestionable. Ian [End Page 454] Boxall’s recent (2014) monograph is both a recognition of this significance and an attempt to probe the contribution that interpretive communities through history have made to our understanding of Matthew today. The subtitle of Boxall’s work, “Content, Interpretation, Reception,” reflects his overarching interests. One may ask, what is the content without interpretation? And, in turn, what is interpretation but reception? And Boxall here has the opportunity to put the latter into practice. His is largely a reception-critical overview of Matthew. Reception criticism or reception theory, one of Boxall’s fields of interest, is one of the literary approaches that have sprung up in the last 50 years. It looks at how texts have been received through history and falls under the umbrella of reader-response criticism. “In the following chapters,” Boxall explains, “different ways readers across the centuries have interpreted Matthew will be explored in support of the proposal that a multipronged approach—combining literary, historical and theological interest, and attending to text, authorial context and communities of readers—is required for a rounded understanding of the Gospel” (13). Indeed, chapter by chapter Boxall unfolds this multipronged approach. Boxall takes a while to get into the actual content of Matthew (his sixth chapter “Beginnings: The Infancy Narratives” begins on p. 76 of his ±180 page work). His introductory chapter orients the reader to Matthean studies. Chapter 2 provides Boxall’s overview of interpretive history of the book. In chapter 3 he presents some broad concerns (such as dating and structure). Chapters 4 and 5 present historical and literary concerns respectively. Chapter 4 concerns Matthew’s audience and social setting and chapter 5 moves to characters and the narrative significance of Matthew’s use of geography. The remainder of the book moves through issues in Matthew following a roughly chronological order (though chs. 7–10 are not readily chronologically disentangled) starting with the “infancy narrative” and ending with the resurrection. Boxall intends to cover the breadth of the content of Matthew without reaching too far into its depth. It is not uncommon to find a reference to a cathedral, painting or work of the arts (a major feature of the text’s pre-critical reception) illustrating a concept’s reception but specifics are more sparse. Particular texts demanding special attention arise on occasion, such as 16:8 in his chapter on the church. Boxall is certainly more at home, however, dealing with generalities of the text and its broad [End Page 455] sweep, as seen in his chapter on “Jesus as Teacher” where the sermon on the mount (three chapters) and Jesus use of parables in general (not limited to ch. 13) each receive 2.5 pages of discussion. This survey approach allows Boxall to move seamlessly through centuries of interpretive history following threads pertaining more to theological issues raised by the text rather than getting bogged down in exegetical questions about specifics of any text. The book is not without its weaknesses. While Boxall gives a nod toward historical concerns declaring, “a rounded interpretation of Matthew invites an interweaving of historical, literary and theological questions” (29), he clearly privileges the literary-critical approach. Kingsbury’s work (Matthew as Story, which specifically focuses on narrative criticism), for example, features frequently throughout the text to the point, I would argue, that it begins to weaken his argument that...

Reading the potentials of Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” (Luke 19:28–40)

Most scholars recognize the nearly ubiquitous imperial presence throughout the Lukan narrative. Though the traditional scholarly position has been that Luke’s Gospel is an apologetic defense of Christianity for Romans and/or for Christians concerned about the Romans, Luke’s depiction of the so-called “Triumphal Entry” (19:28–40) seriously complicates this view. This article begins by briefly outlining two common but diametrically opposed scholarly interpretations of Luke 19:28–40. Then, taking cues especially from reader-response critics and postcolonial theorists, I complicate the problematic premises shared by both readings. I propose that attending to the critical potentialities that emerge within the contexts of both imperialism and the reader–text relationship presents a more promising path between the two interpretive poles. The final section imagines a plurality of proposals regarding potential ancient readings of Luke’s Triumphal Entry pericope.

Texts of religious content in Thucydides and the implied ancient reader

In this paper I elaborate on the very issue of ‘Thucydides and religion’ from the ancient reader’s perspective. Stepping on the concept of the ‘implied reader’, introduced by the reader-response criticism, I am trying to explain that the ancients grasped the supernatural dimension of Thucydides’ History more than we nowadays do. Specifically, I focus on three test cases, the plague excursus (2, 47-54), the siege of Plataea (2, 71-78) and the narrative in 3, 104-5, 32, 1 concerning the Athenian greed. I am trying to construct the implied ancient reader on the basis of ancient - literary or not - sources.

Where are you from?: locating the young adult self within and beyond the text

This article explores the interconnections between young adult (YA) fiction and three YA readers’ constructions of place within and beyond the text. It employs a qualitative, multiple case study design, and utilizes discussion groups, semi-structured interviews, and the creation of place-journals to interpret some of the ways in which three YA readers, from two contrasting Canadian communities, respond to how place and place-identity are construed within their own lives, and within two YA fiction texts. Drawing on geography theory and reader-response criticism, it offers a critical description of the moment in time when these texts, these readers, and the researcher met as part of a reading transaction, within a particular time and space. I argue that these YA readers are aware of the role of place within their own lives, and that they use these individualized constructions to shape their encounters with these texts.

Концепция рецептивной эстетики Ханса Роберта Яусса как принцип конституирования и динамики литературной традиции

Концепция рецептивной эстетики Ханса Роберта Яусса как принцип конституирования и динамики литературной традиции

Elizabeth Scott-Baumann Forms of Engagement: Women, Poetry, and Culture, 1640–1680Forms of Engagement: Women, Poetry, and Culture, 1640–1680. Elizabeth Scott-Baumann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix+236.

<i>Elizabeth Scott-Baumann</i> Forms of Engagement: Women, Poetry, and Culture, 1640–1680<i>Forms of Engagement: Women, Poetry, and Culture, 1640–1680</i>. Elizabeth Scott-Baumann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix+236.