Readers in History

Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response
Erscheinungsjahr 1992
ISBN: 978-0-8018-4437-9
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 413 g

Nineteenth-century America witnesses an unprecedented rise in reading activity as a result of increasing literacy, advances in printing and book production, and improvements in transporting printed material. As the act of reading took on new cultural and intellectual significance, American writers had to adjust to changes in their relationship with a growing audience.

Calling for a new emphasis on historical analysis, Readers in History reconsiders reader-response and reception approaches to the shifting contexts of reading in nineteenth-century America. James L. Machor and his contirbutors dispute the "essentializing tendency" of much reader-response criticism to date, arguing that reading and the textual construction of audience can best be understood in light of historically specific interpretive practices, ideological frames, and social conditions. Employing a variety of perspectives and methods—including feminism, deconstruction, and cultural criticsim—the essays in this volume demonstrate the importance of historical inquiry for exploring the dynamics of audience engagement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Machor, James L

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Readers/Texts/Contexts
Part I: Theory and the Historicizing of Reading Practices
Chapter 1. Misreading as a Historical Act: Cultural Rhetoric, Bible Politics, and Fuller's 1845 Review of Douglass's Narrative
Chapter 2. Sweet Away: Henry James, Margaret Fuller, and "The Last of the Valerii"
Chapter 3. Historical Hermeneutics and Antebellum Fiction: Gender, Response Theory, and Interpretive Contexts
Chapter 4. Feminism, New Historicism, and the Reader
Part II: Reading Communities and the Contexts of Inscribed Audience
Chapter 5. Cooper's Allegories of Reading and "the Wreck of the Past"
Chapter 6. The Address of The Scarlet Letter
Chapter 7. Poetry Readers and Reading in the 1890s: Emily Dickinson's First Reception
Chapter 8. Probable Readers, Possible Stories: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Black Narrative
Part III: Reading and Writing Against the Grain: Race, Gender, and Response
Chapter 9. Uncle Tom's Cabin and Antebellum Black Response
Chapter 10. Reading Before Marx: Margaret Fuller and the New-York Daily Tribune
Chapter 11. Responding to the Text(s): Women Readers and the Quest for Higher Education
Notes on Contributors

Über Autor(innen)

Machor, James L
James L. Machor is a professor of English at Kansas State University, editor of Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, also published by Johns Hopkins, and coeditor of Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies and New Directions in American Reception Study.

James L. Machor is associate professor of American literature at Kansas State University. He is the author of Pastoral Cities: Urban Ideals and the Symbolic Landscape of America.