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McDowell, Stacey (2014) Reading together. Essays in Criticism, 64 (4). pp. 351-372. doi:10.1093/escrit/cgu022 ISSN 0014-0856.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/escrit/cgu022
Abstract
THE TRADITIONAL IMAGE OF THE READER – solitary, sequestered, poring over a book – is very familiar. But what of people reading together? Lovers bending over the same page, friends or family members reading aloud in groups, parents reading to children: all these are common scenes in nineteenth century literature (from which I draw my principal examples here). While settling down to read with another person might promise a sense of both physical and emotional closeness, it is those moments in which reading is ostensibly shared that in fact draw attention to the inescapably private nature of the reading experience. Even as both participants engage with the one text, each of their responses remains to a certain extent individual, subjective, inscrutable. Nevertheless, the act of reading together testifies to a fantasy of literature in which a text might...
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Essays in Criticism | ||||||
Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||||
ISSN: | 0014-0856 | ||||||
Official Date: | October 2014 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 64 | ||||||
Number: | 4 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 351-372 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1093/escrit/cgu022 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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