Reader in Modernist Fiction

Brian Richardson is a Professor in the English Department of the University of Maryland and former president of the Joseph Conrad Society of America. He is the author of several books, including A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-first Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives (2019) and Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (2006). He is the editor or co-editor of ten volumes, including Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices (2009) and a special issue of Conradiana on “Conrad and the Reader” in 2002. He has written numerous articles and book chapters on twentieth century authors, particularly Conrad, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett, in which he discusses voice, interpretation, plot, closure, class, the reader, character and the narratives of literary history. Website: https://brianerichardson.weebly.com

This book’s exciting discovery – the "critical reader" cultivated by modernist fiction across a vast range of texts and authors – is a timely affirmation of modernism’s cultural value as well as a welcome reminder of the profound wisdom that has established Brian Richardson as our leading authority on modernism’s narrative dynamics.

• AcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroduction: Modernist Hieroglyphics and the Implicated Reader1. From James to Conrad and Ford: Suppressed Narratives, Subaltern Reading, and the Drama of Interpretation2. The Fate of Reading in the Work of Joyce: Illusion, Demystification, Sexuality3. "Books Were Not in Their Line": The Use and Abuse of Reading in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf 4. The Dangers of Reading from Edith Wharton to Ralph Ellison 5. Reading Ruins: From Modernism to the Illegible Texts of Postmodernism and BeyondConclusion: The Stories of Modern Fiction, the End(s) of Misreading, and the Other Reader’s ResponseBibliography of Works CitedIndex