Interpretive Conventions

Steven Mailloux is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Rhetorical Power and Reception Histories: Rhetoric, Pragmatism, and American Cultural Politics, both published by Cornell University Press.

Its central theme—that all assertions about literature are conditioned by interpretative rules and preceded by interpretative work—enables Interpretive Conventions to help us inspect the grounds of our practical criticism, to propose several valuable standards for critical argument, competent interpretation, and scholarly objectives, and to provide a widely informed introduction to reader-response methodologies. I have sought to address Mailloux's contentions in detail to show that his serious book not only deserves but demands careful reading, an activity I can trust he approves.- John T. Matthews (NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction)