Some scholars argue that only a change of metre signals the beginning of a new poem in Horace’s Odes. Woodman has objected that, if this were the case, the juxtaposition of poems in the third and ...second asclepiadic metres, which begin with the same two metrical lines, would mislead the reader into thinking that a poem was continuing, only to realize belatedly at the third line that a new poem had begun, ‘a cruel and pointless trick’. This article explores the positive potential of such a trick, which I term false non-closure, to produce pointed, subtle, and complex poetic and thematic effects. The move is situated within Roman poets’ wider practice of springing surprises, twists, and tricks on readers, including Horace’s own use of false closure and shifts of direction. The process of misreading, correcting, and re-reading, always coloured by the initial misreading, forces the reader to reflect on her interpretation of each ode and on the relationships, continuity, and discontinuity, between them, as well as on the very act of reading. The cases of Carm. 1.14–15 and 1.23–24 are examined in detail, and an explanation given for the absence of the trick at 1.5–6 and 4.12–13.
This article reports on two researchers’ experiences of navigating children’s night-time sleep, in relation to reading best-selling parenting books, published by professionals in the UK in the last ...20 years. We felt we were ‘getting it wrong’ where we so badly wanted to ‘get it right’ for our children, because they did not sleep like the books described: silent, solitary, separate and for 12 uninterrupted night-time hours. It was also not possible to ‘read’ the advice without owning our own positionality: in particular our classed, professional identities. Perhaps this is always the case in research, and we should ‘treat our bias as a resource’ as seminal life history work urges. We found we could not but take the advice personally, which tended to focus on behaviour-orientated strategies within the routines and rituals around night-time sleep. We harness an under-studied approach within Early Childhood research, Reader-Response theory, which argues reading is a transaction; the reader brings personal context to the text at the same time as gleaning information from it. Seeing reading as a transaction helps us understand how our identities feed into our reading: our readings shape, but also are shaped by our contexts.
Reading Digital Fiction offers the first comprehensive and systematic theoretical, methodological, and analytical examination of digital fiction from a cognitive and empirical perspective. Proposing ...the new concept of “medial reading”, it argues for the centrality of an audience’s interest in, awareness of and/or attention to the medium in which a text is produced and received, and which we argue should be applied to reader data across media. The book analyses and theorises five generations of digital fiction and their reading including hypertext fiction, hypermedia fiction, narrative video games, app fiction, and virtual reality. It showcases medium- and platform-specific methods of qualitative reader response research across a variety of contexts and settings from screen-based and embodied interaction to gallery installation, and from reading group and individual interview to think-aloud methodologies. The book thus addresses the unique affordances of digital fiction reading by designing and reporting on new empirical studies focusing on hypertextuality, interactivity, immersion, as well as medium-specific forms of textual “you”, ontological ambiguity, reader orientation and empathy. In so doing, the book refines, critiques, and expands cognitive, transmedial, and empirical narratology and stylistics by placing the reader of these new narratives front and centre. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
•The study focused on readers’ perceptions of authorial voice in doctoral writing.•Supervisors evaluated development of voice in two versions of EAL writers’ texts.•Supervisors agreed textual voice ...is important but difficult to define and locate.•Supervisors’ definitions and judgments of voice were linked to their language and disciplinary backgrounds.
Most scholars agree about the importance of an authorial voice in academic writing. There is also a growing body of research on how voice is manifested in texts at a word and phrase level, but relatively little that investigates readers’ perceptions of authorial voice (the effect on the reader) or the development of voice over time. In our study, we explored these issues by eliciting the views of five supervisors as they read and evaluated authorial voice, in the texts of three PhD students, writing in English as an additional language (EAL). We used two sets of comparable texts written by the students relatively early and near the end of their PhD to address the issue of voice development. A thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews revealed what constituted evidence of authorial voice for the five expert readers. All were adamant that an authorial voice is crucial in the writing of PhD students, but found the task of defining and locating voice in the students’ texts, and in discerning progress in students’ abilities to articulate a convincing authorial voice very challenging. Of interest was the finding that the supervisors’ language backgrounds, disciplinary specialities, personal histories, and preferences shaped their impressions of voice. These differences in perceptions of what voice entails held by supervisors from the same broad discipline raise questions about how we approach the teaching and assessment of voice.
This qualitative experimental study examines the utilization of an Extensive Reading Programme from the perspective of ESL students' reader responses. It seeks to examine the kind of written ...responses produced by the mediocre and low proficiency ESL students based on the Reader Response Approach, the outcome of using Reader Response Approach in the Extensive Reading Programme, and the ESL students' experiences towards the Extensive Reading Programme. The study was conducted for a duration of three months in a secondary school. The participants of this study included an ESL teacher and six Form 4 students, comprising three females and three males. The researcher documented data through four sources: classroom observations, interviews with the teacher and students, response journals, and examination marks. Findings indicated that the Extensive Reading Programme and the use of the Reader Response Approach enabled the students to come up with various statements and benefited their language development. The findings of the study suggest that the Extensive Reading Programme and Reader Response Approach should be a part of the curriculum in secondary schools as they help in improving students' language proficiency. The study proposes a guideline for implementing an Extensive Reading Programme and Reader Response Approach in the language classroom, which ESL educators can adopt.
PurposeConsumers have pervasively relied on mobile reviews in digital economy. However, little knowledge exists regarding how customers adopt several mobile reviews to make purchasing decisions. With ...the assistance of reader-response theory, this study investigates how the consistency of product reviews, in terms of their adherence to both other reviews and the prior experience of the customer, affect perceived quality, confirmation of the customer's expectations, the customer's level of trust in the seller and the consequent purchase intention.Design/methodology/approachBased on a scenario simulation and an online experiment to collect data, the authors employed AMOS to test the proposed hypotheses using survey data collected from 314 customers in Study 1 and 420 consumers in Study 2.FindingsThe results indicate that global consistency positively and significantly contributes to confirmation, perceived quality and trust in sellers while sequential inconsistency positively and significantly influences perceived quality. Meanwhile, purchase intention is positively and significantly promoted by confirmation, perceived quality and trust in sellers, and initial valence has some moderating effects on these relationships.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the understanding of how customers apply product reviews to make purchasing decisions from a new angle. It also elucidates the way in which the perceived consistency of product reviews affects how reviewers are perceived and the consequent effect of these perceptions on a customer's purchase intentions.
This article presents reflective writing manifestation in Reader-response literary analysis. The article is aimed at finding out how the reflective writing is manifested in the students ...Reader-response of literary analysis. The writer carried out the study by analyzing the students portfolio documents of their reflective essays responding to three literary works. Fourteen students enrolling Literary Criticism Subject at a private university in West Java took part in the present research. Literary Criticism subject was chosen as the object of the current study, considering that the students in enrolling the subject were not merely introduced to literature, but also were led to be able to evaluate, describe, and analyze literary works. The study revealed some findings. Firstly, Reader-response prompts were helpful in giving aids to the students that they give the students idea how to write down their ideas and thoughts in minds. However, as the second finding, most students tend to keep their focus on the feeling section. Some of them were proven to be more critical by questioning things happened in the stories, yet they still had no idea how to analyze and evaluate the questions they had. The last finding, the writer noticed that none of the students relate their reflective essays to relevant literature to support their opinion. The writer considered that this occurred due to their lack of knowledge and practice of critical thinking and critical writing.
The digital media probed the transition from page-turners to navigators of web pages through endlessly connected hypertexts, as reading has moved from papyrus to print to digital devices. Hypertext ...fictions are sui generis, revolutionizing aspects of authorship and readership in the literary arena. Reading hypertext fiction requires subjective responses to the medium’s semiotics and interpretation. This new form of narrative fiction renders less scholarly attention. This paper presents the dynamics of the shift in readership from print to digital media using hypertext fiction. This paper methodically emphasizes neglected issues and merits of this new genre of literature, determining the readers’ response to two digital hypertext fictions: Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue by and Deena Larsen’s Disappearing Rain. The study was assessed through classroom discussions and questionnaires with 61 students to determine whether the hypertext fictions elevate the passivity of the reading process, the impact of its features on the readers, and whether the medium can establish its implication as a new reading paradigm. This paper implies the significance of exploring hypertext fiction as a detrimental genre in literature.
Cap Go Meh is an Indonesian picture book with interreligious and multiethnic themes and has been translated to English and been awarded for promoting multiculturalism. Studies that focus on reader ...response to interreligious theme of children’s literature are scarce. This study examines a reading engagement of a group of Muslim preservice to Cap Go Meh read aloud. Using a framework of reader response theory that pays attention to cultural influences including religions, this qualitative study posed a question: How do Indonesian Muslim preservice teachers respond to the multicultural story in Cap Go Meh. The respondents’ writing responses generated two major themes. One was concerned with how the preservice teachers relate to Cap Go Meh and how its narrative leads to their reflections about diversity. The other one focused on how the participants might extend the story of Cap Go Meh and highlighted the preservice teachers’ concerns with the role of adults (parents) in the story. Additional data from one participant could potentially show a case for furthering literary experiences using multicultural children’s literature. The researchers note that responses to sensitive issues such as religious diversity occur mostly in a context where there is encouragement from teachers. In this case, it is crucial to highlight the importance of bringing multicultural children’s literature like Cap Go Meh as a medium to discuss the lives and perspective of others.
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