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  • From: gds AT dor.kaiser.org
  • To: <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: corpus-paul: Rabinowitz on Authorial Audiences
  • Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 09:35:07 -0700


Folks:

Somebody asked what exactly Rabinowitz argues about the Authorial
Audience and how that relates to the concept of the Implied Reader in
other narrative theories. I spent considerable time on this in my
dissertation, so I think I can shed a little light on this one for all
who are interested.

As is well known, the mirror image of the implied author is the
implied reader. Walker Gibson first introduced the concept, referring
to the feigned role of the reader as a "mock reader". It was Wayne
Booth who systematically explored the significance of the concept for
narrative studies. Like its narrative twin, the implied author, the
implied reader is not a real flesh-and- blood reader, but rather, a
narrative pattern that functions as an interpretative construct. Its
utility lies in its heuristic value and its ability to draw attention
to the text itself.
The seminal point in that discussion is the considerable difference
between those who will actually read a text and those the author has
in mind while composing the text. Peter Rabinowitz builds upon these
insights, differentiating between the Authorial Audience and the Ideal
Authorial Audience. Rabinowitz postulates an implied reader along the
lines proposed by Seymour Chatman, but splits it into two levels: one
historical and the other textual. The authorial audience consists of
the basic reader competencies and skills required to minimally process
the text. For the reader of the a book from the Bible, this set of
competencies would include a basic knowledge of Hebrew and/or Greek
grammar and language plus a knowledge of ancient reading conventions.
Cultural/historical knowledge is also assumed at this level. It
refers to all the data a reader needs to make sense of the text at a
basic level. This aspect of the implied reader revolves around the
"axis of fact." The Ideal Authorial Audience refers to the basic
values needed to appreciate what is being read. This facet of the
implied reader revolves around what Rabinowitz calls the "axis of
ethics or interpretation." Obviously, a modern reader cannot function
as the latter without some knowledge of the former. Both competency
in First and Second Testament reading conventions and compatible
values are necessary for a modern reader to function as the implied
reader of a biblical text in this sense.
In a similar vein, Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford distinguish between
the audience addressed and the audience invoked. The audience
addressed is an extra-textual receptor rooted in historical and
sociological contexts. This differs from the audience invoked by the
text. This receptor is an intra-textual audience reflecting the "set
of suggested or evoked attitudes, interests, reactions, conditions of
knowledge which may or may not fit with the qualities of actual
readers or listeners." Walter Ong makes a comparable point, arguing
that modern novelists do not think in terms of the audience really
"out there", but instead, of the audience "that fires the
imagination." As a result, the writer's audience is always a fiction,
by which he means that the audience presupposed by text is best seen
in terms of its qualities as envisioned by the author rather than its
actual sociological or historical characteristics. Each author has in
mind a model of the reader who understands, values, and knows what he
needs them to know when he or she constructs a text. One might
therefore say that the implied reader as a set of basic linguistic and
literary competencies is something that an author naturally assumes.
But the set of values he or she presupposes is something that is
actively depended upon in a quite conscious fashion. This is the
essential difference that Rabinowitz is driving at when he splits
Chatman's concept of the implied reader into two sub-components: the
authorial audience and the ideal authorial audience.
This raises the issue of the relation of the implied reader to the
real reader. The implied reader does contain a hint of the historical
reader due to the fact that it assumes basic skills and knowledge that
were present in the original audience in order to process the text.
Secondly, an implied reader is modeled along the lines of real
readers, and as such cannot be simplistically differentiated from
actual recipients of texts (though the modern implied reader is
historically and textually distanciated from the original ideal
audience, as Gadamer, Ricoeur and others have so ably argued.)
Implied readers are normally expected to respond to texts as real
readers would. James Marra has conducted empirical studies on actual
readers' responses to texts and has concluded that "whatever cognitive
or affective responses we may have...are derived from our own real
life experiences and codes as they are projected onto the realities of
the fictional illusion." Implied readers are expected to react to
textual stimuli in the exact same fashion as real readers would if
they valued such values and knew such facts. The value of Rabinowitz'
distinctions is that it enables biblical scholars to account for the
historical and cultural differences which separate the modern reader
from the text in a more precise way than theories which were worked
out on more modern pieces of literature in mind, such as the modern
novel.

I hope that clarifies what Rabinowitz argues, how he differs and
agrees with other narratologists at this point, and what the potential
benefit he brings to the table is for us.

- Gary D. Salyer
Adjunct Professor of Biblical Interpretation
Fuller Theological Seminary of Northern California




  • Re: corpus-paul: Rabinowitz on Authorial Audiences, gds, 08/02/1999

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