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The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett
TLDR
Iser as mentioned in this paper analyzed major works of English fiction ranging from Bunyan, Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray to Joyce and Beckett, and provided a framework for a theory of such literary effects and aesthetic responses.Abstract:
Like no other art form, the novel confronts its readers with circumstances arising from their own environment of social and historical norms and stimulates them to assess and criticize their surroundings. By analyzing major works of English fiction ranging from Bunyan, Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray to Joyce and Beckett, renowned critic Wolfgang Iser here provides a framework for a theory of such literary effects and aesthetic responses. Iser's focus is on the theme of discovery, whereby the reader is given the chance to recognize the deficiencies of his own existence and the suggested solutions to counterbalance them. The content and form of this discovery is the calculated response of the reader -- the implied reader. In discovering the expectations and presuppositions that underlie all his perceptions, the reader learns to "read" himself as he does the text.read more
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DissertationDOI
Sex, crimes, and common sense: framing femininity from sensation to sexology
TL;DR: The authors track the production of "common sense" about female sexuality and psychology in nineteenth-century sensational British literature and conclude that common sense has often worked to preserve reactionary views of femininity.
Book
Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema
TL;DR: In this paper, an Introduction to Narrative Incongruity in Seventies Cinema is presented, followed by a study of the degree of resolution of film endings and a discussion of best picture lists and incoherence.
Journal ArticleDOI
Racial Identification and Audience in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963
TL;DR: The authors examined how two African American historical fiction novels, Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963, frame anti-racist identifications for readers of all races.
Book
Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson
TL;DR: This paper examined the Ellisonian themes and motifs the two later writers take up in their fiction, and looked at Ellison's influence on the strategies they enact to construct themselves as American writers.