Peter J. Rabinowitz

Hamilton College, Comparative Literature, Faculty Member

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James Phelan

Ohio State University

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Freie Universität Berlin

Corinne Bancroft

University of Victoria

Katherine Saunders Nash

Virginia Commonwealth University

Patrick Gill

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Malcah Effron

Carla Wong

University of Granada

Rabeb Ben Hania

University of Sousse

Safa Triki

Ramón Cobo

Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP)

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Books by Peter J. Rabinowitz

Introduction to “Reading over Time”

PMLA

A Companion to Narrative Theory

Blackwell Publishing Ltd eBooks, 2005

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Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates

by Peter J. Rabinowitz, James Phelan, and Brian Richardson

Companion to Narrative Theory

by Peter J. Rabinowitz and James Phelan

Understanding Narrative

by Peter J. Rabinowitz and James Phelan

Authorizing readers: Resistance and respect in the teaching of literature

Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation

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Articles and Book Chapters by Peter J. Rabinowitz

The Critical Balance: Reader, Text, and Meaning

College English, Apr 1, 1980

Squandered on Communism": Shostakovich During the Cold War

Canadian Review of American Studies, 1998

How Did You Know He Licked His Lips?": Second Person Knowledge and First Person Power in The Maltese Falcon

Narrative difficulties in Lord Malquist and Mr Moon

The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, 2001

“A Bird of Like Rarest Spun Heavenmetal”: Music in A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, 2003

Peter J. Rabinowitz - The Rhetoric of Reference; or, Shostakovich's Ghost Quartet - Narrative 15:2

Our Evaluation of Literature Has Been Distorted by Academe's Bias toward Close Reading of Texts

Chronicle of Higher Education, 1988

EJ369125 - Our Evaluation of Literature Has Been Distorted by Academe.

Who Was That Lady? Pluralism and Critical Method

Critical Inquiry, 1979

Since I have yet to exorcise the demons of my invisible audiences, I&#x27;m flattered that Wi... more Since I have yet to exorcise the demons of my invisible audiences, I&#x27;m flattered that William C. Dowling still feels I&#x27;m on the side of the angels. Alas, much of our disagreement arises, paradoxically, because he er-roneously thinks we&#x27;re trying to dance on the head of the ...

The Click of the Spring: The Detective Story as Parallel Structure in Dostoyevsky and Faulkner

Modern Philology, 1979

The Discovery Novel When Cynthia Grenier asked William Faulkner if he read detective stories, he ... more

On Teaching The Story of O. Lateral Ethics and the Conditions of Reading [Full text]

Journal of Literary Theory, 2010

Actually, I&#x27;ve already raised some ethical issues by giving this essay a provocative but... more Actually, I&#x27;ve already raised some ethical issues by giving this essay a provocative but misleading title. »Pauline RØage&#x27;s«1 pornographic classic The Story of O, written in 1954, is infamous as the story of a young fashion photographer who is brought by her lover to a chateau ; while ...

The Absence of Her Voice from That Concord": The Value of the Implied Author

Style, Mar 22, 2011

With Our Own Dominant Passions": Gottschalk, Gender, and the Power of Listening

Nineteenth Century Music, 1993

A Slice of Watermelon: The Rhetoric of Digression in Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Dog’

Digressions in European Literature, 2011

Introduction to “Reading over Time”

PMLA

A Companion to Narrative Theory

Blackwell Publishing Ltd eBooks, 2005

Download

Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates

by Peter J. Rabinowitz, James Phelan, and Brian Richardson

Companion to Narrative Theory

by Peter J. Rabinowitz and James Phelan

Understanding Narrative

by Peter J. Rabinowitz and James Phelan

Authorizing readers: Resistance and respect in the teaching of literature

Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation

Download

The Critical Balance: Reader, Text, and Meaning

College English, Apr 1, 1980

Squandered on Communism": Shostakovich During the Cold War

Canadian Review of American Studies, 1998

How Did You Know He Licked His Lips?": Second Person Knowledge and First Person Power in The Maltese Falcon

Narrative difficulties in Lord Malquist and Mr Moon

The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, 2001

“A Bird of Like Rarest Spun Heavenmetal”: Music in A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, 2003

Peter J. Rabinowitz - The Rhetoric of Reference; or, Shostakovich's Ghost Quartet - Narrative 15:2

Our Evaluation of Literature Has Been Distorted by Academe's Bias toward Close Reading of Texts

Chronicle of Higher Education, 1988

EJ369125 - Our Evaluation of Literature Has Been Distorted by Academe.

Who Was That Lady? Pluralism and Critical Method

Critical Inquiry, 1979

The Click of the Spring: The Detective Story as Parallel Structure in Dostoyevsky and Faulkner

Modern Philology, 1979

The Discovery Novel When Cynthia Grenier asked William Faulkner if he read detective stories, he ... more

On Teaching The Story of O. Lateral Ethics and the Conditions of Reading [Full text]

Journal of Literary Theory, 2010

The Absence of Her Voice from That Concord": The Value of the Implied Author

Style, Mar 22, 2011

With Our Own Dominant Passions": Gottschalk, Gender, and the Power of Listening

Nineteenth Century Music, 1993

A Slice of Watermelon: The Rhetoric of Digression in Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Dog’

Digressions in European Literature, 2011

Yes, But: A Response to Brian Richardson

Style, 2016

Truth or Inconsequence: A Reply to James Phelan

Style

How Did You Know He Licked His Lips?": Second Person Knowledge and First Person Power in The Maltese Falcon

Classification is an occupational hazard for any theorist of detec tive stories—in part because ... more Classification is an occupational hazard for any theorist of detec tive stories—in part because there are so many convenient but competing axes for sorting them out. You can, for instance, differ entiate novels according to the location of the guilt they uncover— say, between Hercule Poirot stories (where detective and criminal are kept rigorously separate) and Oedipal stories (where, as in William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust or Raymond Chandler's The

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Narratology of the Moment

Narratology of the moment is a branch of narrative theory that studies the affective power of par... more Narratology of the moment is a branch of narrative theory that studies the affective power of particular moments in a narrative, viewed apart from their function in the whole, particularly apart from their role in the narrative’s temporal sequence. Adding the category of “flavor” to the standard narratological categories of “voice” and “focalization,” narratology of the moment slows down the reading process to explore the ways that a variety of features (for instance, momentary stylistic fireworks, particular cognitive configurations, or complex games with time and memory) can give individual moments a special frisson far in excess of their role in the larger work. Among other things, narratology of the moment seeks to explain why readers often return to particular passages in the works that they love.

The Intention Debates

A Companion to Literary Theory

The Rhetoric of Digression in Chekhov's 'The Lady with

Cats, Dogs, and Social Minds: Learning from Alan Palmer-And Sixth Graders

Style, Jun 22, 2011

Given how vividly Alan Palmer's essay describes our experiences as co-authors--and given how ... more Given how vividly Alan Palmer's essay describes our experiences as co-authors--and given how we found ourselves "of one mind" in our appreciation of it--we couldn't resist co-authoring a response. What strikes us most is the scope of its application. The social mind is, on one level, a simple concept. But it's a bold one that promotes a cognitive shift in our literary understanding; and once you've taken the leap, the concept provides illumination along many axes well beyond the practice of co-authorship. Granted, Palmer sometimes pushes universality further than we would. He says, for instance, "the concept of action necessarily requires the presence of thought." Yet there are cases--Nawal El Saadawi's God Dies by the Nile is rich in examples--where characters' needs are so fundamental that their actions seem detached from thought. Still, Palmer's contributions to our understanding outweigh any quarrels. We'd like to touch briefly on four ways in which we've found him revelatory: he proposes a vocabulary for talking more precisely about things that readers know but don't know that they know (familiar but unarticulated reading strategies); he provides a framework for reexamining assumptions about how people develop as readers (one that has led us in a surprising direction); he offers a source of new interpretive insights; and be gives us a way to frame new questions. Escaping the Cat: What We All Know Talking to students after reading Palmer clarified our appreciation of just how early readers learn fundamental interpretive practices--and what practices they learn. Corinne read Palmer's article while studying Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh with her sixth-graders at St. Gregory School. She uses the novel to teach basic concepts (plot, conflict/resolution, narration, character, setting, etc), and encourages the development of close reading strategies by asking her students to become "Reading Detectives." In particular, they were looking for clues to develop expectations about how the main conflict (Mrs. Frisby, a field mouse with a bedridden son, must move before the farmer plows through her home) might be resolved. Corinne expected her students to generate examples of clues by applying what Peter calls Rules of Notice in Before Reading--by looking, for instance, at privileged positions, repetitions, and unusual behaviors. These clues would serve as raw material to which students would apply strategies of signification, configuration, and coherence. Surprisingly, though, once past the dead-giveaway, privileged-position clues ("C'mon Ms. Bancroft, the Rats of Nimh are in the title--of course they'll help!"), students looked elsewhere in a way that confirms Palmer's claim that a cognitive approach is fundamental to reading: the most common clues they uncovered were in the minds of the characters. In other words, her sixth-graders, untrained in many standard interpretive techniques, demonstrated well-honed Theory of Mind skills: they were keenly aware of the relationship between a character's actions and his/her state of mind. In an important turning point of the story, the owl (whose species, as any sixth grader will tell you, eats mice) is expectedly reluctant to help Mrs. Frisby; but his attitude miraculously changes when he learns that Mrs. Frisby is Jonathan Frisby's widow. In fact, as Corinne's students eagerly pointed out--making the jump from ToM to Social Mind Theory--everyone's actions change when they learn about Mrs. Frisby's husband. "Don't you think it's strange, Ms. Bancroft, that everyone knows about Jonathan's connection to the rats--except his own wife!" Here, a group of sixth graders excitedly pointed to a collective knowledge among the farm animals, one from which Mrs. Frisby is completely excluded. This exclusion is a bigger, more revealing, and more sophisticated clue than the more basic ones Corinne expected her students to uncover. Thus, while Corinne has to reinforce many fundamental reading strategies, she doesn't need to teach ToM. …

Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation

While writing this foreword, I assumed that I should yield to the inevitable and title it "Before... more While writing this foreword, I assumed that I should yield to the inevitable and title it "Before Reading Before Reading" or perhaps "Before Reading Squared/ 7 1 have now, however, decided to resist the inevitable in favor of the literal-and its implied challenge of giving a new spin to the common phrase "reading a book in its own terms." Here's why: As Peter J. Rabinowitz explains early in the in troduction, the book's purpose is "to explore. .. the ways in which Western readers' prior knowledge of conventions of reading shapes their experiences and evaluations of the narratives they confront" (3). But much in Rabinowitz's exploration of conventions, I gradu ally realized, can apply not just to narratives but also to critical texts. Consequently, Before Reading itself provides the most useful terms and concepts to illuminate Rabinowitz's distinctive theoreti cal project. The reading of Rabinowitz's title refers to what he calls "autho rial reading," the activity by which actual readers seek to enter an author's hypothetical, ideal audience. This foreword is an exercise in authorial reading, but one with an edge. By looking at Before Reading through the lenses the book itself provides, I hope not merely to summarize the book accurately but also to extend its in sights and thus, paradoxically, sharpen our vision of the thing itself. Those lenses, I shall suggest, offer a way of seeing both the strate gies by which Rabinowitz has constructed his complex argument ix xxv

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Années de pèlerinage, Book I: Vallée d'Obermann. Années de pèlerinage, Book II: Sposalizio; II penseroso. Bagatelle without Tonality. En rêve. Harmonies Poétiques et religieuses: Funérailles. Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 (arr. Volodos). Légendes: St. François d'Assise-La predication aux oiseaux. La ...

Modern Brewery Age, Sep 1, 2007

Night on Bald Mountain (orch. Rimsky-Korsakov). Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Ravel). Khovanshchina: Prelude (orch. Rimsky-Korsakov)

Modern Brewery Age, Nov 1, 2008

Arabesque. Sonata No. 2 in g (original finale); Schumann's "Widmung." Transcendental Etudes: Harmonies du soir. Legends: St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds. Ballade No. 2

Modern Brewery Age, Mar 1, 2009

Clifford Curzon: Decca Recordings 1944-1970: Volume 4

Modern Brewery Age, 2008

Evgeny Kissin: The Early Recordings

Modern Brewery Age, Sep 1, 2008

An Issue Devoted to Popular Culture Studies || Rats Behind the Wainscoting: Politics, Convention, and Chandler's The Big Sleep

Fiction updated: theories of fictionality, narratology, and poetics

A companion to narrative theory

Subversive Dialogues

NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 1990

Arnold Weinstein's The Fiction of Relationship is a wide-ranging and deliberately icono-clas... more Arnold Weinstein's The Fiction of Relationship is a wide-ranging and deliberately icono-clastic book with two primary goals. The first is philosophical, or perhaps moral. Weinstein believes that "the individualist code" needs to be contested by the recogni-tion "that the self is part ...