Reader in Modernist Fiction

Many major modernists - including Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bowen, Vladimir Nabokov and Ralph Ellison - wrote central scenes describing characters reading. In most cases, the readers depicted suffer unfortunate fates. Intriguingly, the act of reading is also often intertwined with sexual activities. The Reader in Modernist Fiction analyses the construction of fictional readers, tracing their development and transformation over the first half of the twentieth century. Brian Richardson explores how the effects of reading are represented within modernist and postmodern fiction, and studies misreading as a personal limitation, sexual invitation, aesthetic allegory and ideological critique.

Brian Richardson is a Professor in the English Department of the University of Maryland and former president of the Joseph Conrad Society of America. He is the author of several books, including A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-first Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives (2019) and Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (2006). He is the editor or co-editor of ten volumes, including Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices (2009) and a special issue of Conradiana on "Conrad and the Reader" in 2002. He has written numerous articles and book chapters on twentieth century authors, particularly Conrad, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett, in which he discusses voice, interpretation, plot, closure, class, the reader, character and the narratives of literary history. Website: https: //brianerichardson.weebly.com