Browsing by Subject "Reader-response theory"
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Item Literary knowledge in the reader : English professors processing poetry and constructing arguments(2006-12) Warren, James Edward Jr.; Charney, DavidaThis dissertation brings together aspects of writing-in-the-disciplines research, reader-response theory, and empirical reading research in an investigation of literary scholars reading poems and constructing arguments. I begin with a review of literary criticism published over the past 70 years on Donne's "The Flea," Milton's "Song: On May Morning," Hopkins' "God's Grandeur," and Eliot's "Conversation Galante." This review suggests that certain New Critical interpretive conventions persist in scholarship. In particular, literary scholars continue to read lyrics as dramatic utterances and as organic wholes. I then present findings from a think-aloud study in which English professors read the aforementioned poems and planned a hypothetical conference talk about them for the MLA conference. Reader-response theorists have argued that readers activate certain text-making conventions in order to read literature as literature. In my study, participants' disciplinary reading conventions were so deeply ingrained that their initial processing of the four poems mirrored the interpretive patterns in published criticism of those poems. Next I analyze the think-aloud data and follow-up interviews from the perspective of writing-in-the-disciplines research. Previous researchers found that scholarly literary argument relies on a limited set of special topoi and is not always directed toward the accumulation of new knowledge. The scholars in my study relied more heavily on some topoi during initial interpretation of the poems, while other topoi were used more often during argument planning. The picture of literary argument that emerges is a hybrid of ceremonial rhetoric and communal knowledge building. Finally, I analyze the think-aloud data from the vantage-point of expert/novice research in cognitive psychology. Previous researchers have used the term "generic expertise" to describe expert knowledge that all members of an academic discipline possess. Despite the belief of some within literary studies that their discipline lacks a core, participants in my study demonstrated generic expertise both in their interpretations of poems and in their argument planning. I conclude by arguing that previous descriptions of scholarly literary argument need to be revised. Literary scholars relate to their objects of study in a unique way that ensures the distinctness of literary argument.Item Writing with feeling? : types of personal reference in student papers(2011-05) Beerits, Laura Catherine; Charney, Davida; Ferreira-Buckley, LindaThe question of the appropriateness and effectiveness of students' personal writing is a longstanding one in the academy. In composition studies, the ideological fight over personal and academic writing is most often represented by the oft-studied but rarely changed Bartholomae/Elbow debate. In literary studies, reader-response critics in particular have wrestled with the problems and possibilities of subjective interpretation. Yet despite scholastic interest in issues of personal writing, discussions have remained primarily theoretical and have relied mainly on anecdotal evidence. While small-scale case studies valuably illuminate the processes of an individual student or two, the conversation would be profoundly bolstered by empirical data. How common are personal responses, really? Further, while many believe that any presence of first-person pronouns signals personal, subjective writing, anecdotal cases suggest that there are several categories of personal writing, and that these different types of expressivism produce a range of rhetorical effects. The current study attempts to name and refine these categories--using the distinctions of General claim, Writer-based prose, Personal experience, and Personal claim—to begin to fill in this empirical gap. Is it a mistake to lump all use of personal reference into the category of "personal writing"? Would helping students distinguish between these varying types of personal references inform their stylistic and rhetorical choices? By reviewing a sample of 30 short papers written by college students in a general requirement literature survey course, I will examine how frequently--and in what ways--students reference themselves when responding in writing to a work of literature.