Semeia 31: Reader Response Approaches to Biblical and Secular Texts
Overview
Semeia is an experimental journal devoted to the exploration of new and emergent areas and methods of biblical criticism. Studies employing the methods, models, and findings of linguistics, folklore studies, contemporary literary criticism, structuralism, social anthropology, and other such disciplines and approaches, are invited. Although experimental in both form and content, Semeia proposes to publish work that reflects a well defined methodology that is appropriate to the material being interpreted.
- Key perspectives on biblical criticism
- Includes bibliographies and index
Top Highlights
“Often a reader response critic will attempt to elucidate the history of the criticism of a particular text by trying to find what has happened in the reading experience that has given rise to convergent or (more often) divergent critical assessments of the text.” (Page 7)
“All of this is to say that the implied reader is the locus of a great deal of equivocation in current criticism, but only because reading itself is a mysterious merger of text, reader, and context.” (Page 15)
“The ‘reader’ who discourses is, in a certain manner, in breach of privilege … Reading is done rather than spoken about …’ (439). Criticism is the product of rational choice, and ‘the critic must declare; this is his public and legislative ordination.’ On the other hand, ‘the reader will often hold his llumination mute’ (448). After all, to the reader the text is ‘ ‘a real presence’ irreducible to analytic summation and resistant to judgment in the sense in which the critic can and must judge’ (440).” (Pages 6–7)
“They are not just readers; they are expert, critical readers” (Page 6)
“a battle between critic and reader is fought in almost every college classroom where the Bible is read critically.” (Page 8)
- Janice Capel Anderson
- David Scott Arnold
- G. Douglas Atkins
- Fred W. Burnett
- Georgia B. Christopher
- Kenneth Dauber
- Robert Detweiler
- Robert M. Fowler
- Gary A. Phillips
- Petermichael von Bawey
- Hugh C. White
- Title: Semeia 31: Reader Response Approaches to Biblical and Secular Texts
- Editor: Robert Detweiler
- Publisher: Society of Biblical Literature
- Publication Date: 1985
- Pages: 230
Robert Detweiler is Professor Emeritus of Liberal Arts and Comparative Literature at Emory University, where he was a former director of the Institute of Liberal Arts. He is author of Breaking the Fall: Religious Readings of Contemporary Fiction, as well as numerous other books and articles.
