29/9/06 - English Literature - The Role of the Reader 2

• Passive
• Active
• Reciprocal.

Wolgang Iser, The Implied Reader. Regarded as foundation writer on literary theory. Follows reciprocal theory. Two people looking at stars may see different constellations. "The 'stars' in a literary text are fixed; the lines that join them are variable."

Annotating texts makes you a co-writer, changing the meaning of the text.

Iser's Interaction between Text and Reader. Two Poles: artistic pole the author's text, aesthetic pole the reader's interpretation.

E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Meaning. Any text can be made to mean anything. Plurality of meanings. Criticised fellow critics for using particular texts to 'prove' their literary theories because any text can be made to mean anything. To try to understand what the author 'means' by reading other works, autobiography, etc. but this also involves reading and interpretation, therefore circular.

Paradise Lost. "To justify the ways of God to man." God informs author, reader reads, and reader also knows the ways of God.

C. S. Lewis. 1) What poet says; 2) The thing he makes. Both are ways in which poems can be considered.

Shelley, A Defense of Poetry, 1821. Beleived Satan was the hero of the epic, not God. Blake thought this also. Civil disobedience at height of this time may explain this view.

Was Milton on God's or Satan's side?

Fish, 1967. Two groups: One believed Satan hero (due to style of poem); other believed God hero (thought this Milton's purpose).

Ambiguity in Paradise Lost (Fish) so that it leaves open this decision to each reader.

Intentional and affective fallacy.

Roland Barthes, Death of the Author.

The Open Text. Barthes: writerly texts and readerly texts, e.g. Paradise Lost open to all kinds of interpretation.

Writerly texts - plurality of reading. Infinite connections can be made in the text. Universality.

Berthold Brecht, alienation effect. Dramatic theatre: "I weep when they weep; I laugh when they laugh." Identifying. Agreeing with someone's view of the world. Epic theatre: "I weep when they laugh; I laugh when they weep." Notion of new ideas, changes someone's view of the world.

A Brief History of Reading. Disappearance of textual meaning, in Confessions. Detective novel with no conclusion. Unanswered questions.

Devout readers, early readers. St Augustine's Confessions.

Jerome saw a new method of reading in Milan. St Augustine reading without speaking! Never seen before!

Texts written for affluent female readers. Authors rarely signed these works. Lavish covers. Private reading. Illustration of female individual on front.

Canterbury Tales, Middle England. At that time, scribes wrote each book and signed them. Relates to Chaucer so each scribe influenced the text as he wrote it.

Seventeenth to eighteenth century. Rise of polite readership, e.g. Henry Raeburn's Dr Hamilton. Books for nobility, sign of status. Walter Scott's library showed him a gentleman and status. Not to read, just for show.

Cheap fiction, new technology. Popular literature - violence, crime, etc. Sweeney Todd, e.g. Satirised by members of polite press. Taxes on books and newpapers to stop people reading 'bad' texts.

Pickwick Papers. New serialised fiction. (1836-37) Low investment, loyal readers, suspense, publicity, new market.

Magazines, published serial fiction, e.g. Middlemarch.

End of nineteenth century. Intellects dismayed by popularity of fiction. Ulysses expensive so only gentility afforded it. Returned to pre-industrial methods of publishing.

The cult of the author.

Marketers nowadays hire authors, rather than authors looking for publishers. Authors have little to do with overall conception of books. So why are we preoccupied with authorial purpose?

W. B. Yeats, 1939.