Freund - Return of Reader

The Return of the Reader

THE NEW ACCENT SERIES

General Editor: Terence Hawkes

Alternative Shakespeares 1, ed. John Drakakis

Alternative Shakespeares 2, ed. Terence Hawkes

Post-Colonial Shakespeares, ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin

Re-Reading English, ed. Peter Widdowson

Rewriting English, Janet Batsleer, Tony Davies, R. ORourke, Chris Weedon

English and Englishness, B. Doyle

Linguistics and the Novel, Roger Fowler

Language and Style, E. L. Epstein

The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, Keir Elam

Structuralism and Semiotics, Terence Hawkes

Superstructuralism, Richard Harland

Deconstruction ed. 2, Christopher Norris

Formalism and Marxism, Tony Bennett

Critical Practice, Catherine Belsey

Dialogism, Michael Holquist

Dialogue and Difference: English for the Nineties, ed. Peter Brooker/Peter Humm

Literature, Politics and Theory, ed. F. Barker, P. Hulme, M. Iversen, D. Loxley

Popular Fictions: Essays in Literature and History, ed. Peter Humm, Paul Stigant, Peter Widdowson

Criticism in Society, ed. Imre Salusinszky

Fantasy, Rosemary Jackson

Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching, Patrick Parrinder

Sexual Fiction, Maurice Charney

Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan

Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, Patricia Waugh

Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction, Steven Cohan and Linda Shires

Poetry as Discourse, Anthony Easthope

The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon

Subculture, ed. 2, Dick Hebdige

Reading Television, John Fiske and John Hartley

Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong

Adult Comics, An Introduction, Roger Sabin

The Unusable Past, Russell J. Reising

The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin

Translation Studies ed. 2, Susan Bassnett

Studying British Cultures, Susan Bassnett

Literature and Propaganda, A. P. Foulkes

Reception Theory, Robert C. Holub

Psychoanalytic Criticism, Elizabeth Wright

The Return of the Reader, Elizabeth Freund

Sexual/Textual Politics, Toril Moi

Making a Difference, ed. Gayle Green and Copplia Kahn

AVAILABLE AS A COMPLETE SET: ISBN 0-415-29116-X

Elizabeth

Freund

The Return of the Reader

Reader-response criticism

First published 1987 by Routledge

This edition first published 2003

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1987, 2003 Elizabeth Freund

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0415291453 (hbk)

ISBN 0415300282 (set)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne

To my mother
and to the memory of my father

Contents

It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it.

Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. Here, among large numbers of students at all levels of education, the erosion of the assumptions and presuppositions that support the literary disciplines in their conventional form has proved fundamental. Modes and categories inherited from the past no longer seem to fit the reality experienced by a new generation.

New Accents is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change; to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study.

Some important areas of interest immediately present themselves. In various parts of the world, new methods of analysis have been developed whose conclusions reveal the limitations of the Anglo-American outlook we inherit. New concepts of literary forms and modes have been proposed; new notions of the nature of literature itself and of how it communicates are current; new views of literatures role in relation to society flourish. New Accents will aim to expound and comment upon the most notable of these.

In the broad field of the study of human communication, more and more emphasis has been placed upon the nature and function of the new electronic media. New Accents will try to identify and discuss the challenge these offer to our traditional modes of critical response.

The same interest in communication suggests that the series should also concern itself with those wider anthropological and sociological areas of investigation which have begun to involve scrutiny of the nature of art itself and of its relation to our whole way of life. And this will ultimately require attention to be focused on some of those activities which in our society have hitherto been excluded from the prestigious realms of Culture. The disturbing realignment of values involved and the disconcerting nature of the pressures that work to bring it about both constitute areas that New Accents will seek to explore.

Finally, as its title suggests, one aspect of New Accents will be firmly located in contemporary approaches to language, and a continuing concern of the series will be to examine the extent to which relevant branches of linguistic studies can illuminate specific literary areas. The volumes with this particular interest will nevertheless presume no prior technical knowledge on the part of their readers, and will aim to rehearse the linguistics appropriate to the matter in hand, rather than to embark on general theoretical matters.

Each volume in the series will attempt an objective exposition of significant developments in its field up to the present as well as an account of its authors own views of the matter. Each will culminate in an informative bibliography as a guide to further study. And, while each will be primarily concerned with matters relevant to its own specific interests, we can hope that a kind of conversation will be heard to develop between them; one whose accents may perhaps suggest the distinctive discourse of the future.

TERENCE HAWKES

I should like to acknowledge the help I have received at various stages from many friends and colleagues. The valuable comments and conversation of Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Rael Meyerowitz, Josh Wilner, Michael Goldman and Wolfgang Iser have contributed to the shape of this book. The pervasive influence of Geoffrey Hartman over a number of years has been beyond anxiety.