SocietyHistory Author Reader Response Reader Response Different kinds

Society/History Author Reader Response

Reader Response Different kinds of Readers -- implied reader, resisting reader, etc. -- Male Voyeurism & Female Spectators -- Reading Internet Literature Three major theoretical approaches to Reading

What is reading? What is literary criticism? reading: reading outloud, memorizing, reading books as well as everything else (signs on the street, advertisement, toilet literature, our life, etc. ), dialogue, re-creation; read and write our life literary criticism: appreciation, analysis (from different perspectives), (traditional: biographical studies, textual studies, history of idea approach, etc. )

Different kinds of readers Actual ≠ Author ≠ Narrator Author In the text – Narratee ≠ Implied ≠ Actual Readers “Bluebeard’s Egg” “Rape Fantasies” 《母親》中同情兒子 兒子的大玩偶中的黃春明

Different views on reading: New Crit. : The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what is it and what it does). Avoid subjective reading. But there are different kinds of texts and readings: — passive roles: controlled by Close texts: the text, sociological conditions, Implied reader= or author’s intentions actual readers Open texts: ---- more active ones: inviting the --- limited freedom? readers

Starting Questions How do we read actively?

Different kinds of readers Actual Readers -- Can be Resisting Readers Feminist readings of traditional male canon. e. g. l l Barbara Kruger’s reading of images of women and consumer culture, Sally’s reading of the fairy-tales in “Bluebeard’s Egg” Marxist reading of text’s ideologies l l l Critique of Jack London’s “Chinago” Disclosure of D. H. Lawrence’s ideological contradictions. Critique of the Romantic love in Titanic. (ideological components: love at first sight, rebellious youth, malicious opponent, lower class = natural and lively.

Different kinds of readers: Female Spectators Implied Readers and Actual Readers e. g. 1: Who is the implied Reader? What position do women Take?

Different kinds of readers Implied Readers and Actual Readers e. g. 2: Who is the implied Reader? What position do women Take?

Different kinds of readers Implied Readers and Actual Readers e. g. 3: Who is the implied Reader?

網路文學的讀者 How has the Internet or the other Multimedia changed our reading or writing? Does Internet Literature invite more of the reader’s participation? Does it lose its authorial control?

Different Theoretical Approaches to reading: 3 major categories 1. structuralism (reader as decoder) (will not discuss here) 2. Hermeneutics/phenomenology (reader as an active participant of an event) 3. psychoanalysis/subjective criticism: reading as identification process (Norman Holland)

Gestalt Psychology, etc. What’s this? (from Reader’s Guide p. 46) There is no text without a reader. The reader “actualizes” the meanings of a text. Does it, then, mean that there are endless ways of reading a certain text?

A. Hermeneutics/Phenomenology : 1. Gestalt theory the human mind is seen as having a tendency to construct coherent wholes out of parts, these wholes not merely being the sum of those parts. Gestalt means ‘form’, and reflects the mind’s predisposition to contstruct formal coherence, and to seek ‘closure’ … Interpretation is made of layers of gestalten, each rehearsing some form of closure.

Reading process: W. Iser A continuous process of expectations and negation and modifying our expectations through gap-filling and gestalt-forming. Shall lit. texts fulfill most of our expectations?

A. Hermeneutics: H. Gadamer 1. Pre-supposition-less reading is impossible. We always understand from our horizon of expectation. 2. Reading as a dialogue and fusion of horizons TEXT READER

Literary Horizon of Expectations through familiar norms or the immanent poetics of the genre; 2. through the implicit relationships to familiar works of the literary-historical surroundings; 3. through the opposition between fiction and reality, between the poetic and practical functions of language, which is always available to the reflective reader during the reading as a possibility of comparison. (Social Horizon: our ideologies) 1.

A. Hermeneutics: Literary History (I) paradigm shift & history of reception e. g. Pope in 19 th-century, Shelley in Modern period, Madame Bovary, D. H. Lawrence's work, The Importance of Being Ernest, Fatal Attraction (II) Active dialogue: a text which reinterprets of an older text (both the film and the short story): 好男好女; The French Lieutenant's Woman; 《阮玲玉 》

There is no text in the classroom But there is a community of readers.

B. Psychoanalysis: Reading: from personal response to objectification and social acceptance Norman Holland: argues that all people inherit from their mother an identity theme or fixed understanding of the kind of person they are

Norman Holland: 3 levels in the process of interpretation 1. Shaping the work to fit the pattern of our own defensive and adaptive strategies 2. Discovering in the work fantasies which gratify us. 3. Transforming the work from the level of crude gratification to the level of aesthetic or philosophical unity. (// the artist’s sublimating their desires. )