Corpus-Paul

[gds AT dor.kaiser.org]

     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