Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction

Abstract

R e a d e rs approach prefaces expecting to find out how authors want their texts to be read.Such expectations and readings are what this book is all about.T h e following chapters present a general introduction to current reader-response criticism, a critical perspective that makes the reading experience the central concern in talk about literature.These chapters also propose a specific reader-oriented approach to the study o f Am erican fiction.I develop this approach while exam ining the activities making up the discipline: literary theory, practical criticism, textual scholarship, and literary history.Chapters i and 2 analyze five influential theories o f the literary reading process: those o f Stanley Fish, Norm an Holland, David Bleich, W olfgang Iser, and Jonathan Culler.It turns out that none o f these literary theorists provides the kind o f reader-oriented approach most useful for studying Am erican fiction.Only a reader-response criticism based on a consistent social model o f reading can supply the required approach.Social reading models are based on sociological categories such as communities and conventions rather than psychological categories such as individual selves and unique identities.C hapters 3 through 7 develop such a social reading model, which owes more to the theories o f Fish, Iser, and C uller than to the psychological reader criticism o f H olland and Bleich.Chapter 3 moves the discussion from theory to practice.A reader-response analysis o f a H awthorne short story tries to demonstrate the consequences o f taking the reader's interaction with the text as the prim ary focus o f practical criticism.