What motivates us to reread literary works? How is our pleasure, interpretation, involvement and evaluation different when we read a literary work and when we reread it? This book focuses on the implications of rereading for critical understanding. Drawing on literary theory, cultural anthropology, psychiatry, philosophy and previous theories of reading, Calinescu describes the dynamics of rereading and explores the sometimes complementary, sometimes sharply conflicting relationships between reading and rereading. The ...
Read More
What motivates us to reread literary works? How is our pleasure, interpretation, involvement and evaluation different when we read a literary work and when we reread it? This book focuses on the implications of rereading for critical understanding. Drawing on literary theory, cultural anthropology, psychiatry, philosophy and previous theories of reading, Calinescu describes the dynamics of rereading and explores the sometimes complementary, sometimes sharply conflicting relationships between reading and rereading. The author analyzes fictional works by Borges, Nabokov, Proust, Robbe-Grillet and Henry James among others, explaining how reading texts is related both to symbolic play or make-believe and to playing games with rules. He reviews the history of reading in modern times, discussing how the Reformation led to rereadings of Scripture and how the proliferation of books during the Enlightenment led to a shift from "intensive reading" to "extensive reading". Calinescu looks at the distinctions between reading and rereading from the perspectives of the age, situation and gender of the individual reader. He discusses the problems raised by secret or oblique languages and codes - devised to evade censors, communicate with a secret audience of "secret sharers" or play games of hide-and-seek with the reader - and shows that they naturally lead to rereading a text. Calinescu argues that an understanding of rereading is useful in formulating both analytic strategies of practical criticism and a poetics of reading.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
HARDCOVER Good-Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name-GOOD Standard-sized.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Used book in good and clean conditions. Pages and cover are intact. Limited notes marks and highlighting may be present. May show signs of normal shelf wear and bends on edges. Item may be missing CDs or access codes. May include library marks. Fast Shipping.
