'A Person Takes Something and Makes It Into Something Else': Lessons from Stories of Reading a Fragment. Issue 4 (2nd October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Naishtat Bornstein, Lilach
• Is Part Of: Changing English. Volume 28:Issue 4(2021)
• Page Start: 411
• Page End: 428
• Publication Date: 2021-10-02
• Subjects: Stories of reading -- shared reading -- theories of reading -- Coleridge -- fragment -- Interpretive Interactionism -- Israel -- translation; English literature -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; English language -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 410
• DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1926925
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1358-684X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Here I present 'stories of reading' as a model that takes account of the way an actual reader, together with other readers in a group, reacts to a text as part of an interpretive event. I demonstrate the model through the shared reading and discussion, by a non-academic group of Israeli women, of a Hebrew translation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Romantic fragment Christabel . This work, published in 1816, has produced a rich history of 'stories of reading' in oral group discussions during its creation and since its reception. Thus, I argue, it entails collaborative investigation and interpretation. Moreover, its potential as a fragment poem may be fully uncovered and brought to the fore when read in a group context. I present an ethnography of the reading that examines how personal and collective 'stories of reading' in this group revealed meanings of the poem.