The reader in modernist fiction / Brian Richardson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Richardson, Brian, 1953- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Modernism (Literature)--History and criticism.

Modernism (Literature).

Books and reading in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 200 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2024.

Summary:

Many major modernists - including Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bowen, Vladimir Nabokov and Ralph Ellison - wrote central scenes describing characters reading. In most cases, the readers depicted suffer unfortunate fates. Intriguingly, the act of reading is also often intertwined with sexual activities. This book analyses the construction of fictional readers, tracing their development and transformation over the first half of the twentieth century. Brian Richardson explores how the effects of reading are represented within modernist and postmodern fiction, and studies misreading as a personal limitation, sexual invitation, aesthetic allegory and ideological critique.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: Modernist Hieroglyphics and the Implicated Reader

Chapter 1 From James to Conrad and Ford: Suppressed Narratives, Subaltern Reading, and the Drama of Interpretation

Chapter 2 The Fate of Reading in the Work of Joyce: Illusion, Demystification, Sexuality

Chapter 3 “Books Were Not in Their Line”: The Use and Abuse of Reading in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf

Chapter 4 The Dangers of Reading from Edith Wharton to Ralph Ellison

Chapter 5 Reading Ruins: From Modernism to the Illegible Texts of Postmodernism and Beyond

Conclusion: The Stories of Modern Fiction, the End(s) of Misreading, and the Other Reader’s Response

Bibliography of Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed on March 19, 2026).

ISBN:

1-3995-2838-6

OCLC:

1435580596