Graduation Term
9-22-2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of English: English Studies
Committee Chair
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.
Recommended Citation
Rients, Jeffrey Duane, "Beyond the Words: Paratextual and Bibliographic Traces of the Other Reader in British Literature, 1760-1897" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 1174.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/1174
DOI
http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2020.Rients.J
Page Count
304
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Methods Commons, English Language and Literature Commons