http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
Hardy's rhetoric and reader response in Far from the madding crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles
This is a study of how insights into the process of reading can enhance our understanding of two novels by Thomas Hardy--Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The process of reading may be seen as a communications transaction which involves the reader, the text, and the author. From reader response criticism, we learn that both the reader and the text have dynamic roles in the process of reading a literary text. However, in attributing to the text an active role, reader response critics allow the writer to drop out of the literary transaction. A more likely explanation is that the ultimate director of response is the author, not the text. The author's control of reader response suggests that there is a rhetorical dimension to literature. Rhetoric involves conscious manipulation of language to achieve desired effects. Reader response criticism studies those effects from the reader's point of view, and rhetorical criticism enables us to study them from the author's point of view. Our response to a novel--Hardy's novels, for example--includes response to narrative and artistic devices and recognition of the author's rhetorical use of language and of fictional techniques. Thus, in Far from the Madding Crowd, humor--a standard narrative and fictional technique--also functions as a means of shaping our response to the narrator and to Gabriel Oak. In Tess, the narrator is much more than a fictional device for telling a story. He is a complex personality whose characteristics function rhetorically to control our response to Tess and to the other characters and to shape our understanding of the novel. ...
Ph. D. in Philosophy Texas A & M University 1981
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-207).