Date of Award

9-22-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of English: English Studies

First Advisor

Brian . Rejack

Abstract

Over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, compounding technological improvements and expanding education result in unprecedented growth of the reading audience in Britain. This expansion creates a new relationship with the author, opening the horizon of the authorial imagination beyond the discourse community from which the author and the text originate. The relational gap between the author and this new audience manifests as the Other Reader, an anxiety formation that the author reacts to and attempts to preempt. This dissertation tracks these reactions via several authorial strategies that address the alienation of the Other Reader, including the use of prefaces, footnotes, margin notes, asterisks, and poioumena. The deployment of such paratextual and bibliographic tools allow the author to manage the fear of the Other Reader while still addressing their text primarily to their own discourse community.

Comments

Imported from ProQuest Rients_ilstu_0092E_11573.pdf

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2020.Rients.J

Page Count

304

Download

Share

COinS