Blog Assignment #2 (Due Wednesday, 2/16)

Choose either “Killings” or “Pagan Night” as the basis for your response – or, use the poem or story you think you might use/are using for your paper.

If you do choose “Killings” or “Pagan Night”, I can incorporate some of your responses in class next week, which would be great.

That said, here’s what you should do:

Explore one of the methods we’ve discussed thus far (reader-oriented/response theory):

Identify gaps and explain how and why you “fill them in” as you do. (These can include “holes” in background information on characters; lack of access to character thoughts and feelings; getting part of a scene, conversation or action but not all of it; lack of character motive (you don’t know why a character is acting in a particular way and must assume motive, etc.)

Identify textual “clues” and “signals” that are said to produce the “ideal reader” (the one who has likely picked up on exactly how the author probably intended the text to be read). Here’s a good starting point for this one: Identify the methods the author uses for characterization – which character(s) get your sympathy? Who doesn’t? Do you detect any bias on the narrator’s part – does the narrator appear to actively favor particular characters? (Consider here point of view – who’s telling the story? Why/how does that matter? (The narrator will be either omniscient, semi-omniscient, or “objective” – omniscient narrators have access to all characters’ thoughts and feelings; semi-omniscient narrators have access to some but not all characters’ thoughts and feelings, and a third-person, objective narrator has access to none – this kind of narrator aims to tell the story as though it’s appearing on a movie screen – you see what the characters do and hear what they say, but that’s all you get.)

Try “reception theory” – Remember that the focus with reception theory is the current, larger cultural context surrounding your reading of the story.  What influences the reader’s (yours and/or the general reader) reception of the text? What kind of cultural values, practices, laws, trends, and/or current events are likely to bias the reader’s interpretation? Why? How?