Depicting Abuse in Fiction

This week I read an essay by Christopher Noël titled “Keeping Open the Wounds of Possibility: The Marvelous, the Uncanny, and the Fantastic in Fiction.” It was an approachable, hands-on review of ideas from the Russian Formalists (especially defamiliarization) and Wolfgang Iser (especially the reader and author co-creating the text). But I liked it mostContinue reading “Depicting Abuse in Fiction”

Ways of Reading: Part II

So I’m on Week 6 of my literary theory class, and I’ve discovered that I actually like it. Like literature itself, it’s a conversation. A dialogue. And in the best way, it’s skeptical of itself and its own conclusions. It’s curious about consciousness—where it comes from and how it creates our reading experience. And literaryContinue reading “Ways of Reading: Part II”