1st Edition

The Theory and Practice of Reception Study Reading Race and Gender in Twain, Faulkner, Ellison, and Morrison

By Philip Goldstein Copyright 2022
    218 Pages
    by Routledge

    218 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book examines novels of Faulkner and Morrison as well as Mark Twain and Ralph Ellison in order to show that their works forcefully undermine the racial and sexual divisions characterizing both the South and contemporary culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover, the book discusses theories of reader-response and reception study and elaborates a theory of reception study based on the historical or "archeological" methods of Michel Foucault. As a consequence, unlike most studies of American literature, which discuss its historical contexts or prescribe its readers’ responses, this book explains the reception of these works, including the academic criticism and reviews and, because the internet exerts immense influence in the twenty-first century, the on-line responses of ordinary readers. Unlike most reception studies, this book examines the institutional contexts of the readers’ responses.

    Introduction:

    Ch. 1: Aesthetic Theory: From Adorno to Cultural History

    Ch. 2: Reading in History and in Theory

    Ch. 3: Mark Twain’s Detective Fiction: From The Stolen White Elephant and The Double-Barrelled Detective Story to The Adventures of Pudd’nHead Wilson.

    Ch. 4: Faulkner’s Subversive Modernism: Light in August

    Ch. 5: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: Modernism and Democracy in American Literature

    Ch.6: Three Days Before the Shooting: Modernism and Democracy in/and American Literature

    Ch.7: Toni Morrison’s Beloved: The Forgotten History of Slavery and Patriarchy

    Ch. 8: Toni Morrison’s A Mercy: The Critique of Patriarchy and History’s Lost Opportunities

    Conclusion

    Biography

    Philip Goldstein earned a B.A. in English from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in English from Temple University and was promoted to full professor at the University of Delaware in 2001. With James Machor, he edited Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies (Routledge 2001).