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The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett
01 Jan 1974-
TL;DR: 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.
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TL;DR: Poniatowska as mentioned in this paper describes the way Jesusa Palancares cuts off her story and shuts out the persistent interrogator who has been asking for it This dismissal is her final word, after more than three hundred very full pages of the most detailed and boldly narrated life, a picaresque life of careers ranging from combat soldier in the Mexican Revolution to factory worker, cabaret dancer, hairdresser, and laundress.
Abstract: 0 w F U C K OFF Go away and let me sleep" (Ponia*WW | | towska 1969, 304) That is the way Jesusa Palancares cuts off her story and shuts out the persistent interrogator who has been asking for it This dismissal is her final word, after more than three hundred very full pages of the most detailed and boldly narrated life, a picaresque life of careers ranging from combat soldier in the Mexican Revolution to factory worker, cabaret dancer, hairdresser, and laundress And just to make sure we are impressed, the story is embellished by real or imaginary brushes with historical characters like Emiliano Zapata and old "Goat-Beard" Carranza1 The apparent effort to impress us makes the unceremonious good-bye on the last page a bit abrupt but probably not surprising, either for Elena Poniatowska, the interviewer and immediate target of reproach, or for the public eavesdroppers we readers become From the scandalously unsentimental epigraph to this 1969 testimonial novel called Hasta no verte Jesus mio (Till we meet again, dear Jesus), Jesusa has been rebuffing, rebuking, and otherwise putting us off: "Miss me?" she quips rhetorically on the epigraphic page that precedes any "me" to be missed; "the hell you will when I'm no use to you any longer" Identifying the book as a testimonial novel is already to notice a tension between two genres and two narrative agents2 Testimonio is precisely not fiction It is a first-person narrative in Latin America that, like other oral histories, can be elicited by sympathetic intellectuals who interview illiterate or semiliterate working people The intention, as the
11 citations
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: The notion of post-exotisme is a reference essentielle a l'oeuvre de Antoine Volodine as discussed by the authors, who designait au depart une litterature ; il en est venu a qualifier egalement un imaginaire and une ideologie fondee sur les valeurs d'anciens combattants politiques, incarceres dans le quartier central d'une prison de haute securite.
Abstract: De l'ephemere trouvaille linguistique qu'il etait au depart, le vocable de « post-exotisme » est ensuite devenu une reference essentielle a l'oeuvre de Volodine. Il designait au depart une litterature ; il en est venu a qualifier egalement un imaginaire et une ideologie fondee sur les valeurs d'anciens combattants politiques, incarceres dans le quartier central d'une prison de haute securite. Par un « processus de camaraderie intime», ces prisonniers rendent alors hommage a leurs compagnons decedes en adoptant leur identite et en fusionnant mentalement avec eux. Chacun des recits post-exotiques evoque donc en filigrane l'epreuve de l'incarceration, les ideaux incarnes par les detenus (tels l'attente de la revolution mondiale, l'egalitarisme, ou encore la lutte contre le capitalisme) et leur memoire litteraire (intertextualite interne ou externe, importance de l'oralite et brouillage des identites). D'emblee, nous pouvons alors souligner trois aspects de la litterature post-exotique : son unite (les differents romans renvoient au meme univers), sa dimension communautaire et enfin sa fragilite (condition precaire des prisonniers, difficultes a communiquer et prise de conscience de l'echec de leurs ideaux revolutionnaires). Ce collectif d'ecrivains dissidents se trouve au fondement de l'ecriture d'Antoine Volodine puisqu'il le conduit a partager son entreprise litteraire avec des heteronymes, qui ne representent qu'une infime partie des prisonniers post-exotiques mais sont, pour l'heure, au nombre de trois : Lutz Bassmann, Manuela Draeger et Elli Kronauer. Antoine Volodine se presente comme leur porte-parole et place sur le meme plan l'ensemble des productions de la communaute.
11 citations
TL;DR: In the Odyssey, telling and hearing narratives are part of the reception of guests as mentioned in this paper, and the longest internal narratives are Odysseus' narration of his wanderings, delivered to the Phaiakians, the accounts Nestor and Menelaus give to Telemakhos, and those the disguised O'Neill and Eumaios exchange with each other.
Abstract: is aware of itself as a poetic product.l As is increasingly recognized, the Odyssey is often concerned with what Doherty calls "the reflexive quality of the work-what might be called its attention to its own reception."2 Such discussions note how Odysseus appropriates the language and gestures of the epic singer, functioning as an internal narrator within the greater narrative. There is thus a general awareness that the principal narrator identifies himself with Odysseus and vice versa. Necessarily, if an internal narrator, such as Odysseus, parallels certain tendencies of the principal narrator, so some of the internal audiences depicted in the poem suggest parallels and connections with an external audience, even ourselves.3 In the Odyssey, telling and hearing narratives are part of the reception of guests. The hospitable host provides both the environment as well as the specific impetus for most of the tale telling. The longest internal narratives are Odysseus' narration of his wanderings, delivered to the Phaiakians, the accounts Nestor and Menelaus give to Telemakhos, and those the disguised Odysseus and Eumaios exchange with each other. All of these contexts are extended treatments of hospitality, in which an exchange of narratives is an element in the type-scene.4 The Odyssey offers many other internal narratives, from Phemios' first song, the songs of Demodokos, to Odysseus noting that he narrated his exploits to Aiolos,
10 citations
01 Jul 2003
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that Joyce's oeuvre is best seen as constantly trying to inform an evolutive linguistic poetics, one which, I wish to contend, conditions, and therefore should remain central to, whatever interpretive avenue we choose to explore.
Abstract: There is a delicate empiricism which so intimately involves itself with the object that it becomes true theory. (Goethe) JOYCE'S LINGUISTIC POETICS/POLITICS Joyce's attempts to harness the effects of language and, increasingly with time, languages, may arguably be selected as the feature of his writing which mostly conditioned its technical transformations. Indeed, it is hard for a newcomer to the ever-expanding world of Joyce studies to miss the several time-worn pronouncements made by Joyce himself or, vicariously, by friends and fictional alter egos about his felt need to transcend the barriers of expressiveness set by the systems of existing languages. Though such neat polemical slogans have too often been taken as programmatic, to the detriment of the elements of chance and fluidity that Joyce was increasingly willing to admit into the mechanics of literary composition, there is no denying that Joyce's oeuvre is best seen as constantly trying to inform an evolutive linguistic poetics – one which, I wish to contend, conditions, and therefore should remain central to, whatever interpretive avenue we choose to explore. (R)evolutions Although Joyce seemed to embark with each new work on a radically different experiment in literary language, it is more helpful to see the whole Joycean output as a discrete continuum in which apparently new departures in fact redeployed earlier narrative-linguistic habits in a different guise.
10 citations
TL;DR: The development of the Habitus Listening Guide is described, linking Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction to critical narrative theory, and the interpretative tool outlines listenings which can be used to explore the engagement of youth and their families with schooling.
Abstract: The aim of this methodological article is to contribute a new form of qualitative data analysis that is relevant for the comparative study of family cultures and schooling. We describe the developm...
10 citations