The structure of literary genres

Next Article

Index

Mailloux, Steven J. “Reader‑Response Criticism?” Genre 10 (Fall 1977): 413–31. Phelan, James. Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology. Columbus:

Ohio State University Press, 1996. Probst, Robert E. Response Analysis: Teaching Literature in Secondary School. 2nd ed.

Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2004. Rabinowitz, Peter J., and Michael W. Smith. Authorizing Readers: Resistance and Respect in the Teaching of Literature. New York: Teachers College Press, 1998. Rosenblatt, Louise. “The Poem as Event.” The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. 6–21. Tompkins, Jane P. “An Introduction to Reader‑Response Criticism.” Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore:

The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. ix–xxvi.

For advanced readers

Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Booth, Stephen. An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1969. ———. “On the Value of Hamlet.” Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama. Ed. Norman

Rabkin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. 77–99. Davis, Todd F., and Kenneth Womack. Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory.

New York: Palgrave, 2002. Fish, Stanley. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. New York: St. Martin’s, 1967. Holland, Norman. 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: The

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. ———. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Mailloux, Steven. Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction.

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982. Richards, I. A. Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement. 1929. New York: Har‑ court Brace, 1935. Rosenblatt, Louise. Making Meaning with Texts: Selected Essays. Portsmouth, N.H.:

Heinemann, 2005. Tompkins, Jane, ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism.

Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Notes

1. For example, reader‑response anthologies often include an essay from Jonathan

Culler’s Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature because of Culler’s interest in the way readers use interpretive strategies to make meaning. However, Culler’s goal is to map the structures that underlie the inter‑ pretive strategies we use, just as structural linguistics seeks to map the structures that underlie the languages we speak. For Culler, underlying structures, not read‑ ers, are the ultimate objects of analysis, which is why we’ll examine his work in chapter 7, “Structuralist Criticism.” 2. This passage, and the hypothesis that the reader’s purpose in reading it will influ‑ ence his or her perception of the passage, is taken from a psychological study conducted by J. A. Pichert and R. C. Anderson. My thanks to Brian White, my colleague at Grand Valley State University, for showing me how it can be used to teach reader‑response theory. 3. Although Iser is generally classified as a phenomenological critic (one who studies the activity of reading as an interaction between the author’s consciousness and the reader’s), his work has a good deal in common with that of Rosenblatt. 4. An emerging form of transactional reader‑response theory that is growing in pop‑ ularity has recently taken the name rhetorical reader‑response theory. Key texts are Wayne Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction, James Phelan’s Narrative as Rhetoric, and Peter Rabinowitz’s Before Reading. 5. For similar readings of Gatsby, see, for example, Chase, Gross, Moore, Stern, and

Trilling. 6. Critics who believe Nick’s viewpoint is trustworthy include, for example, Baxter,

Dillon, and Nash. Critics who believe the narrator’s perceptions cannot be trusted include, for example, Cartwright, Chambers, and Scrimgeour.

Works cited

Baxter, Charles. “De‑faced America: The Great Gatsby and The Crying of Lot 49.” Pynchon Notes 7 (1981): 22–37. Bewley, Marius. “Scott Fitzgerald’s Criticism of America.” Sewanee Review 62 (1954): 223–46. Rpt. in Modern Critical Interpretations: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great

Gatsby. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1986. 11–27. Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Bruccoli, Matthew J. “The Great Gatsby (April 1925).” Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. 220–24. ———. “Preface.” The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Macmillan, 1992. vii–xvi. Burnam, Tom. “The Eyes of Dr. Eckleburg: A Re‑Examination of The Great Gatsby.” College English 13 (1952). Rpt. in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays.

Ed. Arthur Mizener. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963. 104–11. Cartwright, Kent. “Nick Carraway as an Unreliable Narrator.” Papers on Language and Literature 20.2 (1984): 218–32.

Chambers, John B. “The Great Gatsby.” The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. London: Mac‑ millan, 1989. 91–126. Chase, Richard. “The Great Gatsby”: The American Novel and Its Traditions. New York:

Doubleday, 1957. 162–67. Rpt. in The Great Gatsby: A Study. Ed. Frederick J.

Hoffman. New York: Scribner’s, 1962. 297–302. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. 1902. New York: Norton, 1988. Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975. Dillon, Andrew. “The Great Gatsby: The Vitality of Illusion.” Arizona Quarterly 44.1 (1988): 49–61. Dyson, A. E. “The Great Gatsby. Thirty‑Six Years After.” Modern Fiction Studies 7.1 (1961). Rpt. in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Arthur Miz‑ ener. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963. 112–24. Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980. ———. “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics.” New Literary History 2.1 (1970): 123–62. Rpt. in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism.

Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. 70–100. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ———. The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ed. Andrew Turnbull. New York: Scrib‑ ner’s, 1963. Fussell, Edwin. “Fitzgerald’s Brave New World.” ELH, Journal of English Literary History 19 (1952). Rpt. in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Arthur

Mizener. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963. 43–56. Gallo, Rose Adrienne. F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Ungar, 1978. Gross, Barry Edward. “Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson: A Kinship.” Excerpted in Gatsby.

Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. 23–25. Hart, Jeffrey. “ ‘Out of it ere night’: The WASP Gentleman as Cultural Ideal.” New Criterion 7.5 (1989): 27–34. Holland, Norman. “Unity Identity Text Self.” PMLA 90 (1975): 813–22. Rpt. in ReaderResponse Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Ed. Jane P. Tompkins.

Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. 118–33. Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: The

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Le Vot, André. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography. Trans. William Byron. Garden City,

N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983. Lowe‑Evans, Mary. “Reading with a ‘Nicer Eye’: Responding to Frankenstein.” Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M.

Smith. Boston: Bedford, 1992. 215–29. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Viking, 1949. Moore, Benita A. Escape into a Labyrinth: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Catholic Sensibility, and the American Way. New York: Garland, 1988. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.