scholarly journals The Relevance of the Reading Process in the Context of Estonian Literary Criticism

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-347
Author(s):  
Susanna Soosaar
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Reading Process ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Time Reading ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Reading Response ◽  
Estonian Language

The importance of the reading experience has been accepted in literary studies ever since the advent of reading-response theories in the 1970s-1980s. Several notable scholars have stressed that meaning is created through the interaction between reader and text, highlighting the significance of the reader. Even though the main principles of reader-response have become commonplace, for some time, reading theories remained relatively stagnant. In the 2000s, however, the topic of reading was rediscovered as new perspectives for examining the reading experience and the reader’s relationship with the text were offered. These new theories shed new light on the figure of the reader and on the work that goes into the process of reading. While the question of the experience of reading has been under discussion in the Anglo-American context, it has never been widely discussed in Estonia. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of well-known reader-response theories that became popular in the 1970s. In addition, examples of a renewed interest in reader-response theories in recent decades are presented. Finally, the article will also examine how Estonian-language literary criticism has engaged with reader-response theories.

scholarly journals Powerful Prose

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Reader Responses ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Psychological Features

What makes a reading experience »powerful«? This volume brings together literary scholars, linguists, and empirical researchers to elucidate the effects and reader responses to investigate just that. The thirteen contributions theorize this widely-used, but to date insufficiently studied notion, and provide insights into the therefore still mysterious-seeming power of literary fiction. The collection investigates a variety of stylistic as well as readerly and psychological features responsible for short- and long-term effects - topics of great interest to those interested or specialized in literary studies and narratology, (cognitive) stylistics, empirical literary studies and reader response theory.

scholarly journals The Answer is Paracritical: Caribbean Literature and The Limits of Critique

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Jay Rajiva
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Black Art ◽  
Caribbean Art ◽  
Modes Of Engagement ◽  
Academic Discourses

I argue that both Rita Felski’s postcritical model (as articulated in The Limits of Critique) and its academic reception are made possible only by ignoring or erasing African-American and Afro-Caribbean modes of engagement with art that predate and complicate the critical-postcritical binary. To counteract the vanguardism of this trend in literary studies, I pair Caribbean philosopher-poet Edouard Glissant’s meditation on the origins of Creole speech as an indirect language of “detour” with Nathaniel Mackey’s theorizing of black art as “paracritical”—a mode that assimilates performance and critique, language and metalanguage, and that sits adjacent to (and not against or behind) traditionally academic discourses of engaging with literature. If Glissant provides the cultural and philosophical frame for an Afro-Caribbean way of reading literature, Mackey supplies the artistic metaphor par excellence of the paracritical hinge, voiced in the idioms of jazz and blues. Finally, I examine how Glissant and Mackey’s ideas find formal and aesthetic expression in Trinidadian-Canadian author Dionne Brand’s 2005 novel What We All Long For, paying attention to the reader response engendered by the adjacencies of violence, empowerment, possibility, and desire in the novel. In order to analyze What We All Long For, we must promote the liveliness and vivacity of the reading experience and put the text under ethical scrutiny, evincing the paracritical faculty that Afro-Caribbean art demands: commingling the twin pleasures of reading and interpretation, establishing a counter-hegemonic model of literary engagement that implicates the reader without stripping away reading’s pleasure.

FROM THE HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC-THEORETICAL RESEARCH OF ALISHER NAVOI’S HERITAGE(ON THE PAGES OF AZERBAIJANI LITERATURE AND LITERARY CRITICISM

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-152
Author(s):  
Almaz Ulvi Bi̇nnatova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
History Of

The research work named “From the history of scientific-theoretical research of Alisher Navoi’s heritage (on the pages of Azerbaijani literature and literary criticism)” was grouped in several directions. In the systematic research within the sections named - 1. “The influence of Alisher Navoiy’s creativity on Azerbaijani literature”, 2. “The influence of Azerbaijani literature on the creativity of Alisher Navoiy”, 3. “Studying of Alisher Navoiy’s legacy in Azerbaijani literary studies

scholarly journals Assessing undergraduate students' reading process: insights from questionnaire and reading task data

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 723-746
Author(s):  
Claudia Finger-Kratochvil ◽  
Rosane Silveira
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Reading Process ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Entry Level ◽  
Reading Abilities ◽  
Time Reading

Many institutions have been studying the construction of different aspects of the reading process and the reader (e.g. OECD, INEP), and they have revealed a gap in the process of building reading abilities at all levels of education. The present study focuses on entry-level college students and analyzes data from thirty-three students, collected by means of (a) two questionnaires assessing the participants' views of the reading process, purposes of reading, and their reading practices, and (b) three reading units designed to measure the participants' reading ability in their native language. The results revealed that a large number of students spend little time reading, although they report that reading is a rewarding activity. Moreover, for most of them, reading is a bottom-up process, and the consequences of this view can be observed in their performance on the reading tasks.

Biblical Criticism and the Challenge of Postmodernism

1995 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Terence J. Keegan
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

AbstractPostmodernism involves recognizing that the objective certitude sought by modern scientific and humanistic methods is not possible. Deconstruction paved the way for postmodernism in literary studies, but it is most evident in the work of some reader-response critics. Many reader-response critics utilize the indeterminacy of postmodern insight but are hesitant to accept its subjectivist implications. Biblical scholars tend to prefer methods that yield verifiable results, but some have successfully used postmodern approaches. Christian scholars, though committed to an idea of transcendence to which postmodernism seems to deny access, can still profitably use postmodern approaches but must be prepared to deal with such questions as inspiration and the relation of scholarship to the Church.

scholarly journals Uit die oogpunt van ’n vrou? Perspektief op feministiese literêre kritiek in die kader van die Airikaanse prosa

Literator ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
J. W. Du Plessis ◽  
D. H. Steenberg
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
South African ◽  
Feminist Literary Criticism ◽  
Final Interpretation ◽  
Anglo American

Feminists feel that in literary criticism not enough consideration is given to feminism as an ideology in the production of texts. According to them, existing literary criticism is strongly man-centred. This is especially true of the practice of South African literary criticism. Although feminism does not have at its disposal a formulated feminist literary criticism, a great deal of research has been done in this direction abroad. This is especially the case in Europe and America. Feminist literary critics apply themselves to the representation of the woman in works by male authors and an analysis of feminine experience in the production of texts by women. This article is an exploration of the Anglo-American and French approaches in feminist literary criticism. An attempt is made to formulate the aims of a possible South African feminist literary criticism in order that not only the general norms, but also the feminist codes in the production of a text, speak towards the final interpretation of a work.

The Postcolonial Aesthetic

PMLA ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 498-503
Author(s):  
Simon During
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Political Identities

Postcolonialism emerged as a field within literary studies during the 1980s as part of the discipline's general restructuring. That restructuring has, perhaps, been insufficiently acknowledged by the profession, and at any rate there seems to be little consensus as to its significance and shape. But it seems undeniable that, during the 1980s, literary criticism ceased to ground itself on its attention to its objects' literary qualities or on its efforts to establish convincing literary judgments about them. It turned rather to thinking about literature as, for instance, a vehicle of cultural-political identities, or as a resistance to ideology, or, more neutrally, as articulated into broader signifying or social structures.

scholarly journals Potential and Actual Cognitive-Emotional Engagement with Characters: A Response to Michael Whitenton and Bonnie Howe & Eve Sweetser

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 530-550
Author(s):  
Ralf Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Potential Reading ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

Abstract This article addresses the contributions by Michael Whitenton, and Bonnie Howe and Eve Sweetser, in the present volume. I endorse all three contributors’ use of cognitive-linguistic approaches, highlighting their helpfulness for the reconstruction of frames that shape the reading experience of audiences located in different historical and cultural contexts. The two chapters meticulously trace the complexity and dynamics of understanding exemplary biblical characters. I emphasise that the level of attention to linguistic detail displayed by cognitive stylistics is a desideratum for a reader-oriented analysis of a text’s potential reading effects. At the same time, I question some assumptions in cognitive linguistics concerning the cognitive-emotional processes real readers are actually likely to perform. The two chapters serve as a starting point for me to discuss general tendencies in recent cognitive and empirical literary studies, which have perhaps overstated the intensity and impact of some processes, while overlooking others that may be just as important.

‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’ Isomorphic relations in reading science fiction

1992 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Stockwell
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Pattern Matching ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Reading Process ◽  
Reader Reception ◽  
Textual Features

A principle of isomorphism is identified as a feature of the reception of texts in the reading process. Principally a mapping of elements or domains, this can be seen to underlie the textual features of explicit surface metaphors, implied metaphors, metaphoric readings of texts, perceived co-operation and coherence. The latter two levels are less obvious examples of isomorphic phenomena, and a model is adapted and developed to explain the pattern-matching involved in resolving meaning from a reading of a text. This resolution of meaning is seen as an effortful activity on the part of the reader, which is balanced against the likely pay-off in terms of satisfaction gained from the reading. The theoretical perspective of reader reception is supported by practical reader-response experiments on science fictional texts. The results of these are reported in terms of the isomorphic procedures already outlined. It is observed that the characteristics of readers determine readings as much as the characteristics of texts.

Coda

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-228
Author(s):  
David Hershinow
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Political History ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Truth Teller

In this book, I have tried to show that it is only with the rise of dramatic realism that the figure of the Cynic truth-teller begins to provoke sustained interpretive crisis, a crisis that takes shape in the sixteenth century and that goes on to drive key developments in our literary, philosophical and political history. Through my readings of Shakespeare’s plays, I have also tried to show that literature – along with its academic offspring, literary criticism – is uniquely positioned to diagnose the interpretive errors that consequently underwrite philosophical and political ideas about the means of achieving extreme critical agency. What these two overarching aims have in common is the critical methodology I develop in order to advance them, and I conclude this book by briefly commenting on the value this method holds for early modern studies in particular and for the discipline of literary studies in general....

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