Beginning amidst the tombs of the 'dead' God, and the crematoria at Auschwitz, this book confronts Nietzsche's legacy through the lens of Plato. The key question is how authors can protect against the possible 'deviant readings' of future readers and assess 'the risk of writing'. Burke recommends an ethic of 'discursive containment'.The ethical question is the question of our times. Within critical theory, it has focused on the act of reading. This study reverses the terms of inquiry to analyse the ethical composition of the act of writing. What responsibility does an author bear for his legacy? Do 'catastrophic' misreadings of authors (e.g. Plato, Nietzsche) testify to authorial recklessness? These and other questions are the starting-point for a theory of authorial ethics.

Product Description: In Re-reading Poets, Paul Kameen offers a deep reflection on the importance of poets and poetry to the reader. Through his historical, philosophical, scholarly, and personal commentary on select poems, Kameen reveals how these works have helped him form a personal connection to each individual poet...read more

Product Description: Examines the interplay between reading and writing in the works of Petrarch and Dante.

Product Description: Philip Larkin, one of England's greatest and most popular twentieth-century poets, is nonetheless widely regarded as a misanthropic, provincial recluse. This volume re-examines that critical view and argues that Larkin's poetry, far from demonstrating his misanthropy, highlights his profound awareness of and concern for readers...read more

Product Description: This book examines the scholarly construction of Geoffrey Chaucer in different historical eras, and challenges long-standing assumptions to enhance the theoretical dialogue on Chaucer's historical reception.

Product Description: What happens when we engage with fictional characters? How do our imaginative engagements bear on our actions in the wider world? Moving between the literary and the philosophical, Sophie Ratcliffe onsiders the ways in which readers feel when they read, and how they understand ideas of feeling...read more

Product Description: Who is the reader? How do we reach them, and why? To what extent are readers determining what libraries offer? How has that changed since the birth of reader development? And what impact has organizational development had on the publishing and promotion of literature? This edited collection covers all aspects of literature in relation to readership, exploring the chain of events connecting author and reader...read more

Product Description: This broad and original study of the full range of John Clare's work is the first to take seriously his repeated appeals to the judgement of future readers. A series of close readings reveals Clare's sophisticated poetics: his covert quotations, his careful analysis of the history, and his fascination with literary success and posthumous fame...read more

In a collection of twelve incisive and intimate essays, the noted critic, essayist, and author of The Gutenberg Elegies reexamines key works of fiction in terms of the personal meaning and influence they have had in his life, covering such works as The Catcher in the Rye, To the Lighthouse, Humboldt's Gift, and Lolita. Original.

Considers the impact of computers and online information on the printed word

Product Description: An anthology of original essays from our most intriguing young writers, Bookmark Now boldly addresses the significance of the production of literature in the twenty-first century. Or simply, “How do we talk about writing and reading in an age where they both seem almost quaint?”The book features authors in their twenties and thirties—those raised when TV, video games, and then the Internet supplanted books as dominant cultural mediums—and their intent is to examine: (1) how this generation came to writing as a calling, (2) what they see as literature’s relevance when media consumption and competition have reached unprecedented levels, and (3) how writing and reading fit in with the rest of our rapid, multitasking world...read more

Product Description: Metafictional texts frequently construct both their narrators and readers as male. The relationship between the narrator and reader within the novel is often dismissed, but in many cases it is the most intimate relationship in the novel...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Using the 180-year history of Keats'sEve of St. Agnes as a basis for theorizing about the reading process, Stillinger's book explores the nature and whereabouts of "meaning" in complex works. A proponent of authorial intent, Stillinger argues a theoretical compromise between author and reader, applying a theory of interpretive democracy that includes the endlessly multifarious reader's response as well as Keats's guessed-at intent...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: This text consists of various contributions to such areas of study as: interaction between text and reader; reader-response criticism; toward a feminist theory of reading; reading as poaching; and "Wilde's Hard Labour and the Birth of Gay Reading".