Introduction: Addressing Readers

Virginie Iché (1) , Sandrine Sorlin (1)

1 EMMA - Etudes montpelliéraines du monde anglophone

The introduction expounds on the pragmatic and rhetoric framework of the volume and the theories convened to account for its conception of literature as communication and/or ascription of places. Reopening the complex author-reader channel, it brings to the fore the various (direct and indirect) modes of address in fiction as well as their effects and purposes. In so doing it offers a substantial contextualisation of the twelve chapters that compose the book, proposing new ways of looking at the author-reader communicational exchanges in fiction from the 18th and 19th centuries to the Modernist period, the later 20th century and the 21st century. The diachronic and cross-medium perspective from the nascent English novel to digital fiction—and gamebook hybridizing the two mediums—highlights how authors and readers of all time have variously negotiated their relative proximity or distance with one another, with authors at times trying to please their readers, or at least not alienate them, at others purposely distancing them so as to better convey their point or enhance their agency. In this negotiated relationship, readers may or may not (willingly or reluctantly) agree to respond to the direct or indirect addresses of both print and digital fiction.

Mots clés: author-reader channel; pragmatics; rhetoric; address; digital; diachronic perspective

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Virginie Iché, Sandrine Sorlin. Introduction: Addressing Readers: New Theoretical Perspectives. The Rhetoric of Literary Communication. From Classical English Novels to Contemporary Digital Fiction, Routledge, pp.2-22, 2022. ⟨hal-03606766⟩