Tekstianalyysin ja lukukokemuksen mahdoton yhtälö

• Kai Mikkonen Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74825

Abstract

The Impossible Equation of Text Analysis and Personal Reading Experience

This article examines Peter J. Rabinowitz’s notions of “authorial audience” and “narrative audience” in terms of their relevance as pedagogical tools in the univer¬sity classroom. Rabinowitz’s rhetorical theory of hypothetical audiences, which has remained relatively unknown in Finnish literary studies, attempts to bridge the gap between the demands of detailed text analysis, knowledge of the author’s expectations, and the reader’s personal involvement in reading. The focus in the article is on the difficulty of knowing just how much of the cultural and historical background of a given text, the basic reader competencies, or the reader’s personal involvement in reading, should be brought into the classroom discussion. The emphasis on the reader’s reaction to the hypothetical roles he or she could join is pertinent in the light of recent empirical research that has found that personal involvement in narrative discourse is important for the learning of textual analysis. This research has shown that more student-centered approaches have achieved better results in teaching sophisticated text analysis and, further, have reported that the students thus remain more favorable orientated to literature (than in courses concentrating solely on textual features). At the same time, however, the focus on the reader’s personal involvement may overestimate the importance of familiar literary conventions and involve uncritical equation of the reader’s personal politics and ethics with those of the author and his or her time.

The article then moves on to a brief analysis of James Joyce’s short story “An Encounter”, from Dubliners, attempting to show how (inductive) analysis of this narra¬tive may move toward broader claims about hypothetical audiences and thus potentially bridge the gap between the demands of text analysis, knowledge of literary conventions and expectations, and personal involvement in reading. The many references to actual locations in Dublin, or to historical names and events in Joyce’s story, along with the political, educational and religious views that it voices and reflects, pose the difficult question of their relevance for (what may be thought of as) an intelligent interpretation of the story. Simultaneously, “An Encounter” investigates hypothetical audiences in its own right, portraying and identifying different types of readers who are deeply involved in the fictions that they read. It is, then, suggested in this analysis that the students’ ability to connect the places and names to actual places and historical contexts may be less significant than their capacity to pretend to join the narrative audience, that is, to test out different imaginative audiences who pretend to believe the story as true. Further, it is argued that the reader’s ability to get more involved in the fictional world of “An Encounter” might help the understanding of the characters’ minds, behavior, speech and their evolving complex relations. As members of the narrative audience, readers may be able to identify particularly relevant questions about the characters and their fictional world, from imaginary perspectives and roles that the fiction offers them.