The Reader at Work: The Role of the Text and Text-Receiver in the Construction of the Protagonist of a Novel

Abstract

The study investigates the influence of self-concepts on the interpretation of literary texts. Following the reader's response approach (László, 1999), the fruition of a narrative can be described as a process in which the reader re-constructs the “reality” represented by the author through his/her self schemas. An Italian novel, “Sostiene Pereira” by Antonio Tabucchi, was chosen to explore the potentiality of this perspective. This novel is a short tale completely centred on the vicissitudes of the main character. First a text analysis was conducted to explore the structure of Pereira's self, revealing ten dimensions. Based on these categories, a questionnaire was constructed and administered to participants to assess their self-concepts. After reading the whole book the participants evaluated the protagonist's self on the same dimensions. Results support the expectations that Pereira's self profile nearly overlaps that of each reader, showing a shared representation of the character colored by slight individual differences.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abelson

R. P.

(1979). Differences between belief and knowledge systems. Cognitive Science, 3, 355–366.

Baumeister

R. F.

(1999). The self in social psychology. Ann Arbor, MI: Psychology Press.

Bruner

(1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Contarello

, & Volpato

(1991). Images of friendship: Literary depictions through the ages. Journal of Social and Personal Relationship, 8, 49–75.

Eco

(1979). Lector in fabula [The reader in the story]. Milano: Bompiani.

Halász

(2002). Categorical recognition vs. processing through imagination in fictional (literary) and nonfictional (historiographical) text understanding. Spiel, 21, 122–138.

Holland

(1975). 5 readers reading. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Iser

(1978). The act of reading: A theory of an aesthetic response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Jennings

M. K.

, & Niemi

R. G.

(1978). The persistence of political orientations: An overtime analysis of two generations. British Journal of Political Science, 8, 333–363.

10.

Knoke

, & Burke

P. J.

(1980). Log-linear models. London: Sage.

11.

Kuiken

Phillips

Gregus

Miall

D. S.

Verbitsky

, & Tonkonogy

(2004). Locating self-modifying feelings within literary reading. Discourse Processes, 38(2), 267–286.

12.

Kunda

(1999). Social cognition: Making sense of people. Cambridge: Bradford Book.

13.

Larsen

S. F.

, & László

(1990). Cultural-historical knowledge and personal experience in appreciation of literature. European Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 425–440.

14.

László

(1986). Same story with different point of view. Spiel, 5, 1–22.

15.

László

(1988). Readers' historical-social knowledge and their interpretation and evaluation of a short story. Poetics, 17, 461–481.

16.

László

(1999). Cognition and representation in literature: The psychology of literary narratives. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

17.

László

, & Cupchik

G. C.

(1995). The role of affective processes in reading time and time experience during literary reception. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 13, 25–37.

18.

Levorato

M. C.

(2000). Le emozioni della lettura [The emotions of reading]. Bologna: Il Mulino.

19.

Levorato

M. C.

, & Nemesio

(2005). Readers' responses while reading a narrative text. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 23(1), 19–31.

20.

Miall

D. S.

(1988). Affect and narrative: A model of response to stories. Poetics, 17, 259–272.

21.

Miall

D. S.

(1990). Readers' responses to narrative: Evaluating, relating, anticipating. Poetics, 19, 323–339.

22.

Miall

D. S.

(2002). Literary discourse. In Graesser

Gernsbacher

M. A.

, & Goldman

S. R.

(Eds.), Handbook of discourse processes (pp. 321–355). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

23.

Moscovici

(1986). The Dreyfus affair, Proust and social psychology. Social Research, 53, 23–56.

24.

Nemesio

(1999). L'esperienza del testo [The experience of the text]. Roma: Meltemi.

25.

Rosenberg

, & Jones

(1972). A method for investigating and representing a person's implicit theory of personality: Theodore Dreiser's view of people. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 22, 372–386.

26.

Rummelhart

D. A.

(1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In Bobrow

D. G.

& Collins

(Eds.), Representation and understanding: Studies in cognitive science (pp. 211–236). New York: Academic Press.

27.

Schank

R. C.

, & Abelson

R. P.

(1977). Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

28.

Tabucchi

(1994). Sostiene Pereira. Milano: Feltrinelli. ( Creagh

, Trans. “Declares Pereira,” New Directions Publishing Corporation).

29.

Upton

(1977). A memory model for voting transitions in British elections. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), 140(1), 86–94.

30.

Upton

(1980). Contingency table analysis: Log-linear models. Quality and Quantity, 14, 155–180.