Aesthetic Reading Research Articles

“What Is There In My Speaking”: Re-Explorations of Language in Abdilatif Abdalla's Anthology of Prison Poetry, <em>Sauti Ya Dhiki</em>

This paper undertakes an aesthetic reading of Abdilatif Abdalla’s anthology of his prison poetry, Sauti ya Dhiki [Voice of Agony]. While his poetry has been repeatedly analyzed as a form of critical discourse, its poetic angle has so far been rather neglected. Instead of presenting a catalogue of stylistic features, this article aims to show that in his poetry “meaning” emerges not beyond but out of poetic form. Concentrating on the centrality of language, the prosodic pattern, as well as the use of topoi in his poetry, it questions the concept of poetry as giving form to an underlying idea. Poetry does not merely “translate” political ideas or prison experience into poetic form; rather, poetic form and language shape the production of thoughts, if not the whole experience of prison. Conceptually, I refer to notions like “cultural figuration” as well as Michael Taussig’s concept of mimesis that seek to go beyond a dichotomy of form and content to highlight the thought-inspiring force of language that has taken form.

Politics on Stage

Politics on Stage David Womersley (bio) Peter Lake How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage: Power and Succession in the History Plays new haven, conn.: yale university press, 2017 xvi + 666 pages; isbn: 9780300222715 peter lake's new study of the Shakespearean history play is, in his own words, "a history book that attempts to use the history play broadly defined as a way to think about the political thought and culture of the Elizabethan fin de siècle" (16). That moment, Lake argues, was obsessed with a single issue: the succession to the old and childless queen. And it is through the lens of that one issue that he views a range of Shakespearean plays that address not just the English past but also classical antiquity (Julius Caesar and Troilus and Cressida) and post-Reformation Nordic politics (Hamlet). The world does not lack political interpretations of these plays. What is fresh in Lake's study? In the first place, he separates himself from Marxist approaches (in which politics is merely epiphenomenal) and from more recent New Historicist readings, which he acutely recognizes as mere gestures toward history and politics, camouflaging aesthetic readings in the verbal trappings of historicism. In this account, politics has genuine agency, and "the theatre was an integral part of these attempts to create, shape, appeal to, and if regicidal push ever came to Marian shove, to mobilise, a protestant political nation" (22). For Lake, Shakespeare did not stand above the tug and scamble of his moment. He fends off the old argument that Shakespeare was not of an age but for all time by reinterpreting the openness of the plays to multiple interpretations (which in the past has been taken as the sign of Shakespeare's cleverly wriggling free from the confines of his period) as a defensive strategy adopted in the face of severe reprisals for political heterodoxy: "The relative scarcity of instances in which we can actually watch the [End Page 675] institutions of the state controlling, editing or suppressing a book or play should not be taken only as a function of the paucity of the sources, still less as evidence for the absence or lightness of control or 'censorship.' Rather it was a testament to the relative success of the regime in laying down clear parameters outside of which people would stray only in the most extreme of circumstances and only then by risking the most serious of consequences" (55–56). Shakespearean ambivalence is thus transformed from the signature of his myriad-mindedness to evidence of his thorough immersion in the instrumental use of the theater: "Shakespeare's serial multivocality, his entirely self-conscious and repeated determination to open up the stories being staged in his plays to multiple interpretations or applications was in itself intensely political" (50). To what end did Shakespeare engage with what Lake asserts was the key political issue of the day, namely the succession to Elizabeth? A striking feature of Lake's discussion is his decision to read these plays in relation to the historical discussions contained in a series of Roman Catholic tracts published from the early 1570s until the mid-1590s, in particular Robert Parsons's fascinating (but surely niche?) pamphlet A Conference about the Next Succession. Lake sees Shakespeare going over the same historical ground as the authors of these tracts, but to different effect, particularly in respect of the crucial reigns of King John and Richard II (the former being the reign in which the largest number of history plays is set—an indication of the absorbing interest it held for early modern English audiences): "Shakespeare [used] his versions of the reigns of King John and Richard II definitively to reject Parsons' view, . . . that England was an elective monarchy, with a residual right, lodged in the commonwealth, to divert the succession, resist and even depose a peccant or tyrannical prince" (584–85). At the same time, Lake detects in Shakespeare's history plays a markedly anti-Puritan energy. And, turning now from the theater to politics, Lake argues for a congruence between the characteristic ambivalences and preoccupations of the Shakespearean history play and the schemes and projects emanating from the circle of...

Capturing the multiplicities of resilience through popular geopolitics: Aesthetics and homo resilio in Breaking Bad

In this article, Grove and Adey's (2015) call to capture the multiplicities of resilience through aesthetics is advanced by engaging with the first two seasons of the television series Breaking Bad. This engagement demonstrates that the relationality of geopolitics and mobility is important for resilience. To capture dynamics generated by the interplay of geopolitical contexts and resilient subjectivities through popular geopolitics, Jacques Rancière's aesthetics and the concept of the aesthetic subject are deployed. The emergence of homo resilio as a political subject within an imagined American heartland is presented to contextualise the aesthetic reading of Breaking Bad that follows. The character Walter White is presented as a paradigmatic example of homo resilio to map the geopolitics of this subject position. The paper concludes that race and gender feature at the intersections of homo resilio, geopolitics, and cultural criticism, reiterating the importance of popular geopolitics for capturing the multiplicities of resilience.

Racialized rooms and technologies of stardom in Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter

Drawing on recent theories of race from critical race theory, this article examines Michael Ondaatje’s 1976 novel Coming Through Slaughter to assess the involvement, or lack, of technologies of stardom such as photography and radio in the celebrity of the fictionalized jazz musician Charles “Buddy” Bolden. This essay builds on established postcolonial and aesthetic readings, and offers an alternative to the often-held view that Ondaatje is not concerned by race, or the suggestion that he is only preoccupied by art and artists. Its textual focus is an interpretation of the counterfactual (put differently, anachronistic) scene involving a radio and scenes related to the darkroom and the racial significance of its black and white negatives. It argues that these technologies “colour” the rooms in which they are found and thereby complicate ideas of domestic privacy and opposing publicity.

Rhetoric and Power: The Drama of Classical Greece

Rhetoric and Power: The Drama of Classical Greece

"Designerly" Ways of Reading: Insights From Reader Response in Drama for Enriching the "A" in Language Arts

In this interpretive case study of reader response in drama, a drama troupe is the context for illuminating how young actors read in "designerly" ways; that is, how their reading processes facilitated constructive, solution-focused thinking in their development of characterizations. By examining the nature of reader response in the drama troupe, I hope to help educators understand how design thinking occurred as an aesthetic reading practice and consider ways in which design thinking can be cultivated in the language arts classroom. I argue that design thinking inspires the young to engage the imagination, practice teamwork, and take risks as they work to make their visions real. Perhaps most importantly, I contend that design thinking can help prepare the young for facing complex and highly ambiguous problems characteristic of 21st century participatory cultures.

How Students Make Meaning from Literary Text

A BSTRACT : This research was intended to explore how students make meaning whenever they read a literary text. It employed a qualitative method to find out how students responded to literary text in meaning making, type of responses produced by students after reading a literary text , and condition where students produced those responses. It was a case study involving seven students who were taking a course of Prose and their teacher. Classroom observation, questionnaire , and interview served as the data collection method. The result of this research indicated that students responded to literary text in making meaning through multiple reading with different purposes ranging from reading for gaining general idea, reading for learning from the text to reading for searching information. In addition, the way students read a literary text was through the continuum from aesthetic reading to efferent reading. The process of making meaning was demonstrated by most students through questioning about text itself and bringing the text to their lives. Students posed questions dealing with the element of story. Responses that students produced after reading a literary text was different, vary from restatement, associative, figurative , and emotional responses. Based on these findings, it is recommended for teachers that they should be explicit in stating their expectation on what students should achieve. Meanwhile, although students themselves who provide and choose literary text, they should select literary text based on their reading skills, in case of choosing the easy ones. K EY WORDS : M eaning , r eader response, literary text , aesthetic reading, e fferent reading , and interaction of students and teachers in the classroom. About the Author: Yayu Heryatun , M.Pd. is a Lecturer at the English Department IAIN ( Institut Agama Islam Negeri or State Islamic Religion Institute) “Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin” in Banten, Indonesia. For academic purposes, the author is able to be contacted via her e-mail at: yayuheryatun@yahoo.com How to cite this article? Heryatun, Yayu. (2013). “How Students Make Meaning from Literary Text?” in EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies , Vol.6(1) August, pp.43-54. Bandung, Indonesia: Minda Masagi Press owned by ASPENSI in Bandung, West Java; and FKIP UMP in Purwokerto, Central Java, ISSN 1979-7877. Chronicle of the article: Accepted (June 15, 2013); Revised (July 17, 2013); and Published (August 17, 2013).

Funktionen des literarischen Lesens zwischen Abitur und Studium

AbstractThe goal of this study is to demonstrate the current status quo of reading functions that are imputed to literary reading between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Of particular interest are such reading functions that claim validity in the context of teaching situations in schools and universities. To this end, the study defines in the first part the term »reading function« and distinguishes classifications in literary studies from those that operate in the interest of empirical social sciences and literary didactics. In the process, it becomes apparent that the classifications of literary studies as a rule presuppose ideal reception situations and recipients, whereas empirical social science studies are interested in the real process of reading. The results of empirical research have identified reading functions such as entertainment, fantasy development, the development of aesthetic sensibility, reinforcement of empathy, moral consciousness, and identity formation. Werner Graf formulated seven »modes of literary reception competency« that are likewise closely related to reading functions, including instrumental reading, intimate reading, reading as participation or aesthetic reading. In light of some criticisms of Graf’s method, but above all in light of the temporal distance (Graf’s interviews were conducted before the so-called »digital turn«), Graf’s approach is confronted with prognoses regarding the transformation of reading functions from the last ten years. The latter state that reading for information would increase at the expense of literary-aesthetic reading, that the emotional stakes of literary reading would largely be supplanted by media consumption, and that a class-based differentiation would take place. The testing of these prognoses proceeds using the example of a few recent studies with youths from the generation of »digital natives«.As a whole, the prognoses prove to be confirmed according to the recent studies presented here: reading functions are located more in relation to education and information, are in this way more extrinsically motivated and part of the (educational) performance mentality. In the private realm, media presumably offer a low-threshold alternative to obtain gratification in the field of entertainment and relaxation.

Our Knowing Compelled to Go Back: Speculative Misreading and the Identity of Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) resists or problematizes many of the literary categories that frequently organize our reading: modern or postmodern, Western novel or Southern novel, national allegory or historical metafiction or apocalyptic thriller. I propose an alternative to such categories of genre, movement, or literary genealogy—reading the novel as a self-conscious, narrative working-through of a literary-philosophical problem. The concept that Blood Meridian continually circles without fully resolving, I suggest, is a problematic ontology of violence, problematic because it appears to assert both the utter contingency of human existence and the absolute self-determination of human will. Historicist, aesthetic, or political readings of the novel that fail to address this problem will always be unsatisfactory. I offer what I call a speculative reading which moves this problem to the center of the text, and examines the text’s attempts to resolve it.

Operating Classroom Aesthetic Reading Environment to Raise Children's Reading Motivation

This research aims to explore how preschool educators understand about raising children's reading motivation through operating classroom aesthetic reading environment. With one year qualitative research, sixteen 4-6 years old young were observed and interviewed. The first stage interviews were undergone with environmental guidance. After the physical class reading environment was adjusted into aesthetic perspective, children's reading motivation and attitudes were triggered. The second stage involved themed reading activities, including the child-centered extended reading activities, arranging parent-child and peers shared reading time, designing borrowing books home activities, promoting peers and parent-child shared reading, and classroom hot-popular reading books selection ballot. Data collection methods included observation, interviews, children's relative documents, drawings, and hands-on works. Based on analysis of research data, main results were extracted as below: young children's reading motivation including interest, perceived control, collaboration, involvement, and efficacy were promoted through classroom aesthetic reading environment and parent-child shared reading promotion activities. Finally, according to conclusion of this research, suggestions for relative teaching application and subsequent research were proposed as reference.

A arquitetura e Schopenhauer. O problema da fruição e o lugar da arquitetura na teoria estética schopenhaueriana

No presente artigo, esboço uma problematização acerca do pensamento estético de Schopenhauer, particularmente no que diz respeito à sua análise sobre a arquitetura e a fruição do objeto arquitetônico. Pretendo abrir duas vertentes de análise, relativas a duas inquietações minhas: primeiramente, a compreensão da arquitetura em termos da submissão a relações causais e fins utilitários, deixando entrever, com isso, certa filiação de Schopenhauer aos cânones da arquitetura neoclassicista. Depois, o modo mesmo de fruição do objeto arquitetônico, limitada à contemplação visual, tendo como corolário a distinção, a meu ver, precária, entre a arquitetura e o artefato. A guisa de conclusão, procuro amalgamar tais inquietações levantando a necessidade de uma distinção entre hierarquia e transversalidade no que tange a uma compreensão da leitura estética presente no Livro III de O mundo como vontade e como representação.

How Daring Is the Reading: Emerson’s Aesthetic Reading

Abstract With the Common Core State Standards now adopted in an overwhelming number of U.S. states, the authors argue that American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson offers a complementary approach to the teaching of literature, one that focuses on and fosters aesthetic reading experiences. Emerson’s aesthetic reading speaks to a purposeful playfulness that encourages readers to allow their imaginations full sway and to play with interpretation; it also views reading experiences as events that take into consideration the experiences made possible when actively paying attention to the moments, oneself, and one’s relationships and surroundings when reading; finally, it values the performance of reading, of living through the experience of reading that nurtures creativity, risk taking, and an enlivening of the imaginative spirit. These three interrelated and complementary concepts situate Emerson as an apostle for aesthetic reading experiences and provide a much needed supplement to the Common Core State Standards that delimit reading in schools, especially the reading of literature, to a narrow set of possible readings with standards-based outcomes.

Vasilii Petrov and The Poetics of Patronage

This article seeks to bridge the gap between sociohistorical and aesthetic readings of Russian occasional verse by arguing that patronage itself can be seen as engendering its own poetics. The author focuses on hitherto unanalyzed features of Vasilii Petrov's lyrics addressed to various patrons. The close readings of Petrov’s odes and epistles call attention to the poet’s coordinating syntax as structuring the subordinative relationships between poet and patron, and articulating discourses of friendship, community, and the public, of civic virtue, and of social and lyric interdependence. The essay ultimately arrives at a definition of the poetics of patronage, in which the poet claims agency without insisting on his autonomy (as would his successors in the Romantic period), and in which the lyric voice relies upon an other, drawing inspiration from conditions of relationship rather than isolation.

From freedom to equality: Rancière and the aesthetic experience of equality

This article examines Ranciere’s political reading of aesthetics through a historical analysis into the two aesthetic theories of freedom at work in Ranciere’s philosophy; Kant’s freedom as self-governance and Schiller’s freedom as harmony. While aesthetic experience is considered morally conducive through its association with freedom, this article argues that Ranciere translates such discussions of freedom into that of equality by extracting the political dimensions of aesthetic experience. Given that art has the unique ability to empower the spectator through its aesthetic experience of equality, the true political potential of art arises from its power to redistribute the sensible rather than through the overt expression of political themes. By juxtaposing Ranciere’s politics of art with Kant’s beauty as the symbol of morality, this article argues that art becomes a symbol of political emancipation for Ranciere in its capacity to generate the experience of equality. Inasmuch as Ranciere attributes the aesthetic revolution to the eighteenth century, it becomes evident that the empowerment of the spectator has been central to art since the inauguration of the aesthetic regime.

Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure. Rowan Boyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. v+241.

<i>Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure</i>. Rowan Boyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. v+241.

Learning from teachers and pupils in literature: case-based aesthetic reading in EFL teacher education

Abstract Claims for the value of literature in EFL teaching and learning traditionally centre around three models: the cultural, language, and the personal growth model (Carter &amp; Long, 1991). In the context of EFL teacher education, the core question is: can literature also contribute to the professional development of EFL trainee teachers and, if so, how? Based on the assumption that school-related English-language literature can be used for professional case-based work this paper reports a context-specific interdisciplinary model of literature in education which synthesizes case theory (Steiner, 2004) and the theory of dialogic aesthetic reading (Delanoy, 2002), thus providing an educational setting for both literary experience and professional learning in EFL teacher education.

Changing things around: Dramatic aspect in the &lt;i&gt;Pericope Adulterae&lt;/i&gt; (Jn 7:53–8:11)

In this article the transactional model of narrative as expounded by Louise Rosenblatt, supported by an analysis in terms of dramatic aspect, is employed to show how the interpolated scene in John 7:53–8:11 (known as the Pericope Adulterae and hereafter referred to as PA) functions as a pivot of power in the gospel. The content of the scene, as well as its placement within the gospel, serves to promote an aesthetic reading that focusses attention on the experience during the reading event. Awareness of sensations, images, feelings and ideas from past experiences, as well as the sounds and rhythms of the words become important. The reader responds to the aesthetic transaction, the various elements of total experience, rather than simply to the text, during and after the reading event.

The polyimage poetics in Ibsen's late plays

The unique poetics of polyimage implied in Ibsen’s late plays can be excavated with aesthetic reading. The term polyimage is coined to describe Ibsen’s original design in aesthetic form and ingenious realm in aesthetic reaction in his late plays; that is, beyond an imagery realm, another imagery realm exists, which construct a deep vision of significance. In each of the excellent late plays, what Ibsen creates is one or more veiled holistic imagery realms in addition to an ordinary entire imagery realm perceived by most audiences. The “layers of imagery realm” result from Ibsen’s “double self-examinations”, including self-examination of soul and of art. It is these “double self-examinations” that make polyimage possible in his late plays and generates the attribute of “meta-art” in these works. Compared with polyphony in Dostoevsky’s novels, the polyimage in Ibsen’s late plays contains a unique modernity, which is of great significance to modern artistic creation.

“Walls Have Never Held Us Back”: 60 Years of Student Films at the University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf

Owing to its location, the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF is particularly well suited to reflect audiovisual cultural heritage. It is situated in close proximity to the Babelsberg film studios, which has a tradition of filmmaking that goes back more than a century, and the University, which is the oldest of its kind in Germany, has benefited from the studio’s mythos. With the creation of an endowed professorship for audiovisual heritage in June 2013, as well as the initiation of a new program of study devoted to film heritage (to Filmkulturerbe), the Film University is positioned to assert the importance of securing and maintaining audiovisual heritage. On this basis, a scholarly project (supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [DFG]) has been dedicated to studying the university’s filmic heritage. Student films from 60 years of the school’s history, with a particular focus on the films from the GDR era, are being analyzed in the context of film history and in terms of institutional history as well. The research takes stock of how the student films have been archived and transmitted, and it also examines the school’s own narratives about its history. Both film historical and aesthetic readings of selected films are conducted with reference to recent debates about DEFA cinema. In addition to the research project on student films, a number of other initiatives are underway, ones that pay particular attention to questions of preservation and digitization.

Reading Machines: On the Surface of Meaning – Beyond the Surface of Discourse

Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of reading. Although the concept of reading machines is almost as old as the notion of writing machines, it has received far less attention in literary and cultural studies. The following essay addresses this gap. The first part of the argument links the reading machine to Freud’s definition of a tool. As a prosthesis connected to the human body and mind, a tool produces ‘trouble at times’: translation difficulties between the machine and its user affecting matters of materiality, discourse, and meaning alike. The reading machine embodies such ‘trouble at times’ that results from the paradox tension between machine and meaning. While the machine requires the mechanized processes to be unambiguous, the reading process is ambiguous by definition. Most of the reading machines invented in the past decades, do not take into account the trouble that results from such a tension: first and foremost, they serve to support reading processes mechanically. Yet, some of them stand out and hold a specific potential to stage such troubles and render the underlying tensions productive. The article discusses three of them, each of them focussing on a different aspect of the reading process: the first one is a ‘pedagogical reading machine’ (1767) concerned with the alphabetization process, the second one is an ‘aesthetic reading machine’ (1930) designed for reading literary texts, and the third one is a ‘critical reading machine’ (2007) that focuses on literary criticism.