Book•
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: The authors investigates how to deal with the performance of metafiction and suggests ways for the interpreter to cope with the metafictions performance in the context of point-of-view.
Abstract: Contemporary fiction, or, rather, metafiction, emphasizes a new relationship between subject and reader that challenges traditional practice of point of view in fiction. This article investigates that challenge and suggests ways for the interpreter to deal with the performance of metafiction.
9 citations
01 Jan 1997
9 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: The importance of stories in educating the moral imagination of the child provides the context for a qualitative enquiry that compares a number of developing readers' responses to fiction in a school and classroom context, focusing on the features that distinguish their responses to questions about moral choice and virtue in a range of stories as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The importance of stories in educating the moral imagination of the child provides the context for this thesis, which explores children's responses to the moral dimension of fiction. Studies in narrative psychology, literary theory and children's responses to reading also provide the empirical and theoretical background for this qualitative enquiry that compares a number of developing readers' responses to fiction in a school and classroom context. Focusing on the features that distinguish their responses to questions about moral choice and virtue in a range of stories, the thesis explores a mode of response to fiction called moral rehearsal. It identifies a range of strategies children adopt to explore and evaluate the moral world of narrative texts such as the use of moral touchstones, alternative narratives and dramatisation. It presents an original application of philosophical anthropology to the data in order to distinguish between what I call mimetic and diegetic rehearsal in children's responses. This phenomenological interpretation suggests the ways in which narratives contribute to the constitution of consciousness in the child.
Drawing mainly on school-based interview conversations, peer group talk and some children's written work about a range of fiction, this enquiry adopts an interpretive, case study approach to children's moral responses to fiction. It examines the child's perspective to produce an account of moral imagination in developing readers that illuminates a previously unexplored mode of reading - moral rehearsal - relevant to theories about the development of children's reading, literary response and moral sense. It represents a contribution to the literature on children's literary experience, the empirical study of children's reading and children's moral and spiritual formation.
9 citations
TL;DR: The non-reading of books should be characteristic of all collectors as discussed by the authors, and this is not news to me, but it is news to many collectors who do not read books.
Abstract: And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of all collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. Experts will bear me out when I say that it is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, ‘‘And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?’’ ‘‘Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sèvres china every day?’’ —Walter Benjamin
9 citations