Building Intradisciplinarity in English Studies through Textual Hybridity and Performance

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-270
Author(s):  
Stephen Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Binary Separation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Do So

To build on the legacy of reader-response theory, English studies needs to destabilize the foundational binary separation of reading and writing by creating stronger intradisciplinary relations between composition and literary studies. English studies professors can do so by foregrounding the hybridity and performativity of the texts they teach and study.

Surprised by Percival: Arthurian Transtextuality and the Reader in George MacDonald’s Phantastes

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-142
Author(s):  
Daniel Gabelman
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Holy Grail ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Normal Reading

Abstract The Arthurian aspects of George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858) have been overlooked in Arthurian studies and downplayed in MacDonald scholarship. To fill this gap, the first section of this article examines the opening paratexts of the first edition (title, subtitles, epigraphs) tracing their Arthurian echoes and allusions. The second section focuses on a key architext, Sir Percival’s quest for the Holy Grail, suggesting that Anodos rather than the unnamed knight is the character most informed by Percival. Simultaneously, the article draws on reader response theory and Derrida’s poststructuralism to argue that Phantastes is a highly self-reflexive, metafictional work intended to disrupt normal reading and writing practices in order to initiate the reader into a more open, transformative mode of reading.

scholarly journals Female Readers as Literary Critics: Reading Experiences of Kano Market Romance Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Haruna Alkasim Kiyawa
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Romance Novels ◽  
Romance Fiction ◽  
Romance Genre ◽  
Traditional Marriage

This paper aims to explore the female readers reading experiences, views and feelings of Hausa romance novels found in most of the northern part of Nigeria. This article also examines some criticism and accusations against the readership and content of the Hausa romance genre. The study applied the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt’s (1978) as guide by selecting 7 female readers within the age ranges between 22-26 years from 2 book clubs to participate in the study. The findings revealed that all the readers individually were able to reveal their varied responses, beliefs, and experiences on the value of the romance novels which challenged the assertion made by the literary critics and traditional society that the books have no relevance in their life activities which supported their arguments and personal interpretive reading stance towards the Hausa romance genre. The finding yielded four themes were emerging: (a) promoting literacy development; (b) resistance to the traditional marriage system in society; (d) enlightening females on social inequality. These findings provided empirical support for the application of the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt (1978) outside classroom contexts to understand the role of African romance novels towards female social transformation.  

Hermeneutics and Postmodernism: Can We Have a Radical Reader-Response Theory? Part II

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Noble
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Reader Response Theory

The flaws in Fish's hermeneutics that were diagnosed in Part I (it is now argued) are consequences of his underlying epistemology. This is a version of anti-foundationalism which claims that facts are the product of interpretation; but a careful study of how this issue is handled by N. R. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn shows that Fish's epistemology is fundamentally unsound. An alternative account of the fact-interpretation relationship is then proposed, and the outline of an objectivist, readerindependent hermeneutics are sketched. This is further developed by showing how a common argument against objectivism (based on the historical situatedness of reason and knowledge) may be refuted.

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