Interpellation and Counter-Interpellation in the Novel

Publication year
2022
Comment

Here's a description from the Introduction to the volume:

In Chapter 4, Jean-Jacques Lecercle compares three incipits (Jane Austen's Emma, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and a Mills & Boon romance entitled Forbidden Rapture by Violet Winspear), each establishing a specific relationship with their readers. He accounts for them by using the metaphor of "the story is a journey along a path" as revisited by Ingold. Ingold distinguishes between "lines of transport" and "lines of wayfaring" which involve a different positioning of the reader. Winspear's Mills & Boon novel is undergirded by the metaphor of the "line of transport" bringing the reader-as-tourist from a point of departure to a programmed ending through pre-determined stages along the way. Literary works like Woolf's let the reader "stroll" through the text without imposing an interpretation, as what matters is less the destination than the "wayfaring" itself.