Hermeneutic Desire and Critical Rewriting

Starting from a comprehensive examination of current post-structuralist and socio-semiotic theories of narrative, this book formulates an interactive model of literary interpretation and pedagogy emphasizing process, critical self-awareness and strategies of re-reading/re-writing. A literary pedagogy premised on the concept of "rewriting", the author argues, will enable readers to experience the process of narrative and critical construction creatively.;The earlier chapters explore the implications of recent theories (reader-oriented, deconstructive, feminist and socio-semiotic) that bank on an interactive, recreative paradigm of criticism. The latter part of the book argues the advantages of a literary pedagogy that encourages critical reformulation and a focus on the reader's own articulatory strategies, thereby bridging critical theory and practice, production and reception of texts. This theoretical and methodological argument is organized around a cluster of post-structuralist readings of Henry James and two experimental seminars that have all foregrounded, though from different angles, the essential affinity between James' narrative and critical practice, and a literary pedag