The Reader in Modeist Fiction

by: Brian Richardson (Author)

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Edition: 87th

Publication Date: 2024/5/31

Language: English

Print Length: 216 pages

ISBN-10: 139952836X

ISBN-13: 9781399528368

Book Description

Many major modeists – including Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bowen, Vladimir Nabokov and Ralph Ellison – wrote central scenes describing characters reading. In most cases, the readers depicted suffer unfortunate fates. Intriguingly, the act of reading is also often intertwined with sexual activities. The Reader in Modeist Fiction analyses the construction of fictional readers, tracing their development and transformation over the first half of the twentieth century. Brian Richardson explores how the effects of reading are represented within modeist and postmode fiction, and studies misreading as a personal limitation, sexual invitation, aesthetic allegory and ideological critique.

About the Author

Many major modeists – including Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bowen, Vladimir Nabokov and Ralph Ellison – wrote central scenes describing characters reading. In most cases, the readers depicted suffer unfortunate fates. Intriguingly, the act of reading is also often intertwined with sexual activities. The Reader in Modeist Fiction analyses the construction of fictional readers, tracing their development and transformation over the first half of the twentieth century. Brian Richardson explores how the effects of reading are represented within modeist and postmode fiction, and studies misreading as a personal limitation, sexual invitation, aesthetic allegory and ideological critique.