Abstract
The empirical study of literary experiences affords the opportunity to investigate the extent to which the interpretations of literary critics may coincide with the meaning construction operations of flesh-and-blood readers. The present study explores the analytical potential of a statistics-based Check-all-that-apply (CATA) methodology, traditionally used in consumer research, in the study of real reader response. To this purpose, an online questionnaire designed along CATA lines is used to investigate the emergence of storyworld possible selves during narrative interaction with the graphic short story “City” (Wasco, 2015). The findings are compared to those of two previous studies of this short story, one literary (Herman & Vervaeck, 2019) and the other empirical (Martínez & Herman, 2020), and suggest that a CATA methodology can enlighten aspects of readerly response not previously addressed, particularly regarding the idiosyncratic construction of the main character in ways relevant to individual readers’ construction of themselves.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
