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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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Journal Article
Michael Hutt1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on five Nepali novels published between 2005 and 2010, during the final months of the internal conflict between the CPN (Maoist) and the monarchical state, and the period of political transition that followed.
Abstract: In his seminal book Literature, Popular Culture and Society, Leo Lowenthal argues that studies of the representation of society, state, or economy in the literature of a particular country or time contribute to our knowledge of ‘the kind of perception which a specific social group— writers— has of specific social phenomena’ and therefore to our knowledge of the ‘history and sociology of shared consciousness’ (1961: 143) This discussion will focus on five Nepali novels published between 2005 and 2010, ie during the final months of the internal conflict between the CPN (Maoist) and the monarchical state, and the period of political transition that followed The novels were selected mainly because they have been widely read and discussed, at least in Kathmandu, and can therefore be seen as possessing sociological as well as purely literary significance Three of them (Narayan Wagle’s Palpasa Cafe, Narayan Dhakal’s Pretkalpa, and Krishna Dharabasi’s Radha) won one or other of the two major Nepali literary prizes awarded each year, and the other two (Yug Pathak’s Urgenko Ghoda and Buddhisagar Chapain’s Karnali Blues) have achieved a high public profile The paper will summarize the content of these novels and provide some translated extracts It will then analyze and discuss them, with a particular focus on (a) Dhakal’s, Dharabasi’s, and Pathak’s use of the past (b) the influence of the Maoist insurgency and the imprint of Maoist ideology (c) the location of each novel’s central protagonist in relation to urban metropolitan perspectives and (d) implied and actual readerships The paper will explore the sociological significance of the commercial success of several of these books in light of the increasingly close relationship between Nepali literature and the Nepali print media Finally, it will ask whether the expansion of the readership for Nepali novels in recent years is a sign that the Nepali novel is now breaking out of the narrow elite sphere of ‘art literature’ and becoming a part of what Ashish Nandy calls ‘the popular’

2 citations

Dissertation
02 Jun 2010
TL;DR: This article examined the reception of five contemporary Chinese glam-writers and their works in mainland China and found that Chinese readers are not merely passive recipients of the literary works, or cultural dupes, but both savage and savant readers of popular culture.
Abstract: This thesis examines the reception of five contemporary Chinese glam-writers and their works in mainland China. It explores three different types of reception by three reading constituencies: literary critics, actual women readers, and participants on the glam-writers’ personal blogs. Drawing in part on western reception theory and reader-response criticism, this thesis focuses on the role of the reader in reading and interpreting the glam-writers’ works and makes an original empirical contribution to audience research in mainland China where such research is as yet not developed. By adopting a range of qualitative research methods, I investigate the ways in which contemporary Chinese readers understand and respond to a particular type of women’s literature at the turn of the twenty-first century. I demonstrate that Chinese readers are not merely passive recipients of the literary works, or ‘cultural dupes’ (Hall 1981), but both savage – in the sense of severe – and savant readers of popular culture. This also means that the negative influences of these works, as predicted by Chinese mainstream literary critics, are not evident in actual readers’ responses to these texts.

2 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a sociological analysis of literary studies that is distinguished from the sociology of literature in that its focus is on literary studies as a social practice rather than as a socio-cultural institution: how literary studies is institutionalized as such not how it functions in relation to literature.
Abstract: This paper aims to present a sociology of literary studies that is distinguished from the sociology of literature in that its focus is on literary studies as a social practice rather than as a socio-cultural institution: how literary studies is institutionalized as such not how it functions in relation to literature. The sociological analysis of literary studies in this paper entails two tasks. Firstly, it constructs a methodological frame within which literary studies can be observed and analysed in terms of the rules of discursive formation rather than as a pre-discursive entity. This is achieved through conceptualizing the Foucauldian notion of discursive formation and knowledge practice as an analytic strategy and operationalising it via Paul Dowling's Social Activity Method. Empirically, the analysis produces a description of the practice of literary studies as instantiated in the particular region of the practice constituted with what I refer to as the crisis discourse. The analysis describes literary studies as that which is emergent upon differing institutionalising strategies articulated by its participants to mark out literary studies from other practices and to maintain its disciplinarity through regulating the distribution and the access of the distribution of the discourse within and beyond the practice. The generalisability of the research in this paper lies in the applicability of the analytical method that can be employed at any given level of analysis to examine discursive practice—such as literary studies—as the effects of the particular discourses in terms of how they articulate and sustain the institutionalised identity of the practice.

2 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
09 Oct 2019
TL;DR: This article explored how Zulu youth in South Africa interpreted some of these metaphors from their context, and also gave them the opportunity to translate some biblical metaphors for their peer-group, using images that are more meaningful to them.
Abstract: Biblical poems make extensive use of metaphors which related to the culture of the original writers. This study explores how Zulu youth in South Africa interpret some of these metaphors from their context. It also gave them the opportunity to translate some biblical metaphors for their peer-group, using images that are more meaningful to them. Their compositions show some insightful interpretation of the Hebrew texts, particularly with respect to their use of new metaphors (often in an expanded form). These new metaphors tend to be within the same domain as those in the original text. The ambiguity inherent in metaphor offered space for the Zulu youth to introduce new (and insightful) imagery in translating metaphors from another culture. The process is worth extending to other communities to enrich our understanding of how people from different contexts perceive and think.

2 citations