Performative Criticism: Experiments in Reader Response

Genre-bending experiments that appropriate, impersonate, and speak through already-created literary characters in order to offer fresh interpretations of well-known literary works.

In these inventive and genre-bending critical essays, Gerry Brenner provides fresh interpretations of classic literary works by empowering significant characters to represent themselves as legitimate readers with strong responses. Through imaginary interviews, letters, “dialogues of the dead,” a revised ending, and a training report, he gives voice to characters from the biblical Book of Ruth, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Maltese Falcon, and others. Instead of asking readers to read his interpretation of a text (i.e., a critic’s interpretation from the outside ), Brenner asks them to read a character’s or historical or imagined person’s interpretation (a reader-response interpretation from the inside ). Challenging the long-dominant depersonalization of literary criticism, Brenner enlivens the effect, value, and significance of scholarly and critical writing.

“A very fine contribution to reader-response criticism and to the teaching of literature.” — James Phelan, author of Narrative as Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology

“The book’s fascinating recreation and reinterpretation of canonical literary characters is a linguistic tour de force. It’s bound to raise new questions about and therefore new interpretations of some of the most compelling stories in world literature.” — Jeffrey Berman, author of Risky Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom