Protocols of Reading

Discussing a wide range of literary theory in a clear and accessible way, prize-winning author Robert Scholes here continues his ongoing construction of a humane semiotic approach to the problems of reading, writing, and teaching. Taking the view that all the world's a text, Scholes considers numerous texts from life and literature, including photographs, paintings, and television commercials as well as biographies and novels. A significant and thoughtful effort to think about the responsibilities of reading in the wake of deconstruction. -Choice Protocols of Reading is a personal, avuncular book, attractive in its common sense and brevity. -Wendy Steiner, Times Literary Supplement A complex argument developed in delightful plain English, Protocols of Reading sees both textual fundamentalism and deconstructive debunking as needful opposites in an oscillation that Scholes labels nihilistic hermeneutics. Fine-tuning this oscillation is what the humanistic enterprise is all about, he suggests; it is our key to the true connection between reading and ethics. -Richard A. Lanham, University of California, Los Angeles Robert Scholes, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities at Brown University, is also the author of Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English; Semiotics and Interpretation; and Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction