eine Zeitperspektive

Elektronische Version der gedr. Ausg. 199

Von der dementierten zur zerspielten Form des Erzählens

Elektronische Version der gedr. Ausg. 199

Shoujo versus Seinen? Address and reception in Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)

This article uses the Japanese television anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) as a case study through which to problematise the relationship between two prominent traditions within children’s literature criticism: narratology, with its vocabulary of implied readers and textual address; and reception studies, which typically gather data through empirical work with children. The figure of the “child reader” is claimed by both traditions, although in one case that reader is a textual construct and in the other a human being; yet this ambiguity is not typically addressed within studies of individual texts. Puella Magi Madoka Magica, a complex work that disrupts viewer expectations and genre assumptions, both destabilises its implied viewership and challenges conventional beliefs about the tastes and capacities of actual viewers, especially the extent to which those viewers can be categorised by age or gender. I argue that, by taking a sideways step from page to screen, and especially by analysing a non-Western work, it is possible to highlight the contingent and arbitrary nature of some of the assumptions that permeate literary critical discussion, and to help bring narratalogical and reception studies into a more productive relationship

Introduction: Shakespeare's public spheres

Habermas’ sense of a “cultural Public Sphere” is a notoriously complex term and, when applied to Early Modern cultures, needs careful definition. This essay both introduces the variety of methods by which we might approach playtexts with a view to their public – auditory – impact and contributes to a debate about an audience's understanding of Shakespeare's plays. By selecting two words and their spread of use in one play, Twelfth Night, we might appreciate the potential for meaningful ambiguity latent in how we hear the language of live performance. If we search for how certain terms (in this case, the cluster of semes derived from repetitions of “fancy” and “play”), we might find at times incompatible senses, yet we get near to appreciating the range of Early Modern dramatic language

Construing the child reader: a cognitive stylistic analysis of the opening to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2009) charts the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who is adopted by supernatural entities in the local graveyard after his family is murdered. This article draws on the notion of the “construed reader,” and combines two cognitive stylistic frameworks to analyse the opening section of the novel. In doing so, the article explores the representation and significance of the family home in relation to what follows in the narrative. The analysis largely draws on Text World Theory (Werth, 1999; Gavins, 2007), but also integrates some aspects of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 2008), which allows for a more nuanced discussion of textual features. The article pays particular attention to the way Gaiman frames his narrative and positions his reader to view the fictional events from a distinctive vantage point and subsequently demonstrates that a stylistic analysis of children’s literature can lay bare how such writing is designed with a young readership in mind