Reading Across Worlds - Transnational Book Groups and the Reception of Difference

"Moving between the worlds of professional (academic) and lay readers (book groups), between metropolitan and non-metropolitan audiences, between the imagined worlds of fiction and the real worlds of reading, and between the locations of England, Scotland, Canada, the Caribbean, India and Africa, Reading Across Worlds draws otherwise distant readerships into conversation. Combining sustained empirical analysis of reading group conversations with four case studies of classic and contemporary novels: Things Fall Apart, White Teeth, Brick Lane and Small Island, the book pursues what can be gained through a comparative approach to reading and readerships. This is a book about how readers beyond the academy talk about, use and make sense of a literature that publishers and bookstores, the press and professional critics, have variously labelled 'multicultural', 'international', 'diasporic', 'cosmopolitan', 'global', 'postcolonial', 'Third World', or more recently, 'World'. "--

List of contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Transcription Key Notes on Book Groups 1. Introduction 2. Professional and Lay Readers 3. Remote Reading 4. Reading and Realism 5. Reading in the Literary Market Place 6. Reading as a Social Practice - Race Talk Appendices Endnotes Bibliography Index

Report

Product details

• Authors: B Benwell, B. Benwell, Bethan Benwell, Procter, J Procter, J. Procter, James Procter, James Benwell Procter
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 17.12.2014
• EAN: 9781137276391
• ISBN: 978-1-137-27639-1
• No. of pages: 288
• Series: New Directions in Book History; New Directions in Book History
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Cultural history; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); B, Literature, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Cultural Theory, Literature: history & criticism, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Literary theory, World Literature, Literature, general, Culture—Study and teaching, Civilization—History, Biography, Literature & Literary studies, Palgrave Literature Collection, Literature—Philosophy, Postcolonial/World Literature, African Literature