Taking up Robert Brooke's suggestion that a model of reading must describe the processes readers use, I examine the expectations and actual reading experiences of two readers reading Swinburne's “A Ballad of Dreamland.” After describing in some detail how the readers mediate among often conflicting expectations to arrive at a plausible interpretation of the poem, I consider the relevance of this orientation—focusing on process rather than on either product or expectations—for research into how readers understand narratives.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BrookeR., Three Models of Narrative Comprehension in William Stafford's ‘Traveling through the Dark’: Some Relations between Schemata and Interpretive Context, Empirical Studies of the Arts, 2, pp. 75–94 and 173–193, 1984.
2.
NewellA. and SimonH. A., Human Problem Solving, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972.
3.
de BeaugrandeR., Poetry and the Ordinary Reader: A Study of Immediate Responses, Empirical Studies of the Arts, 3, pp. 1–21, 1985.
4.
KintgenE. R., The Perception of Poetry, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1983.
5.
JaussH. R., Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, BahtiT. (translator), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1982.
6.
HortonS. R., Interpreting Interpreting: Interpreting Dickens's “Dombey,”The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1979.
7.
JaussH. R., The Poetic Text within the Change of Horizons of Reading, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, BahtiT. (translator), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 139–185, 1982.
8.
CullerJ., Semiotics as a Theory of Reading, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, pp. 47–79, 1981.
9.
DillonG., Think/Talk, paper presented at the 1984 MLA Convention, Washington, D.C.
10.
PrattM. L., Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1977.
11.
KintgenE. R. and HollandN. N., Carlos Reads a Poem, College English, 46, pp. 479–491, 1984.
12.
ChomskyN., Problems and Mysteries in the Study of Human Language, Reflections on Language, Pantheon Books, New York, pp. 137–227, 1975.
13.
ProppV., The Morphology of the Folktale, ScottL. (translator), 2nd edition, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1968.
14.
RumelhartD. E., Notes on a Schema for Stories, Representation and Understanding: Studies in Cognitive Science, BobrowD. G. and CollinsA. (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 211–236, 1975.
15.
RumelhartD. E., Understanding and Summarizing Brief Stories, Basic Processes in Reading: Perception and Comprehension, LaBergeD. and SamuelsS. J. (eds.), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey, pp. 265–303, 1977.
16.
MandlerJ. M. and JohnsonN. S., Remembrance of Things Parsed: Story Structure and Recall, Cognitive Psychology, 9, pp. 111–151, 1977.
17.
de BeaugrandeR., The Story of Grammars and the Grammar of Stories, Journal of Pragmatics, 6, pp. 383–422, 1982.
18.
MandlerJ. M., Another Story of Grammars: Comments on Beaugrande's ‘The Story of Grammars and the Grammar of Stories,’Journal of Pragmatics, 6, pp. 433–444, 1982.
19.
JohnsonN. S. and MandlerJ. M., A Tale of Two Structures: Underlying and Surface Forms in Stories, Poetics, 9, pp. 51–86, 1980.
20.
de BeaugrandeR. and MillerG. W., Processing Models for Children's Story Comprehension, Poetics, 9, pp. 181–202, 1980.
21.
MeyerB. J. F.HaringM. J.BrandtD. M., and WalkerC. H., Comprehension of Stories and Expository Text, Poetics, 9, pp. 203–212, 1980.
22.
BlackJ. B. and BowerG. H., Story Understanding as Problem Solving, Poetics, 9, pp. 223–250, 1980.
23.
BruceB., Analysis of Interacting Plans as a Guide to the Understanding of Story Structure, Poetics, 9, pp. 295–312, 1980.
24.
MandlerJ. M. and GoodmanM. S., On the Psychological Validity of Story Structure, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 21, pp. 507–523, 1982.
25.
HaberlandtK., Story Grammar and Reading Time of Story Constituents, Poetics, 9, pp. 99–118, 1980.
26.
den UylM. and van OostendorpH., The Use of Scripts in Text Understanding Comprehension, Poetics, 9, pp. 275–294, 1980.
27.
MeehanJ. R., Stories and Cognition: Comments on Robert de Beaugrande's ‘The Story of Grammars and the Grammar of Stories,’Journal of Pragmatics, 6, pp. 455–462, 1982.
28.
ChomskyN., Rules and Representations, Columbia University Press, New York, 1980.
29.
CullerJ., Beyond Interpretation, The Pursuit of Signs, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, pp. 3–17, 1981.
