CRITICISM

Arich, Friedrich. “Dogsical Reading: Gravity's Rainbow's Reversals and Reader-Response Criticism.” Pynchon Notes 42-3 (spring-fall, 1998): 292-302.

Reader response interpretation of Gravity's Rainbow.

Clifford, John. “The Unconscious Redux.” Reader, no. 43 (spring 2000): 38-41.

Studies the interconnectedness of culture and the subconscious while reading texts of literature, focusing on a poem titled My Papa's Waltz.

Dawson, Melanie. “Lily Bart's Fractured Alliances and Wharton's Appeal to the Middlebrow Reader.” Reader, no. 41 (spring 1999): 1-30.

Theorizes that Wharton's characters proved to be popular with her readers not because of their glamour and beauty, but because they were very similar to themselves.

Harris, Wendell W. “Contextualizing Coram's Foundling Hospital: Dickens's Use and Readers' Interests.” Reader, no. 43 (spring 2000): 1-19.

Discusses the importance of contextual information in increasing a reader's understanding of the text and its historical context using a character from Dickens' Little Dorrit as an example.

Iser, Wolfgang. “Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response.” In Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader, edited by K. M. Newton, pp. 226-31. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.

Explains his interpretation of reader-response criticism, concluding that one of the most important contributions of literature is its ability to transcend the limitations of time and language in order to reach people of all ages and cultures.

Noble, Marianne K. “Masochistic Eroticism in Uncle Tom's Cabin: Feminist and Reader-Response Approaches.” In Approaches to Teaching Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elizabeth Ammons and Susan Belasco, pp. 150-61. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2000.

Notes the difficulties of responding with an appropriate feminist response to the latent masochistic discourses in texts such as Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. “A ‘Figure’ in Iser's ‘Carpet’.” New Literary History 31, no. 1 (winter 2000): 91-104.

A response to an earlier reading of Henry James's short story The Figure in the Carpet by Iser.