Reception Studies

A broad survey on how audiences make meaning out of mass media Media Reception Studies broadly surveys the past century of scholarship on the ways in which audiences make meaning out of mass media. It synthesizes in plain language social scientific, linguistic, and cultural studies approaches to film and television as communication media. Janet Staiger traverses a broad terrain, covering the Chicago School, early psychological approaches, Soviet theory, the Frankfurt School, mass communication research and critical theory, linguistics and semiotic theory, social-psychoanalytical research, cognitive psychology, and cultural studies. She offers these theories as a set of tools for understanding the complex relationships between films and their audiences, TV shows and their viewers. She explains such questions as the behavior of fans; the implications of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity with regard to the media; the effect of violence, horror, and sexually explicit images on viewers; and the place of memory in spectatorship. Providing an organized and lucid introduction to a staggering amount of work, Media Reception Studies is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in understanding the effects of mass media.

The texts, images and events of the ancient world have been used both as sources of authority and exploitation in politics, culture and society and as icons of resistance and contest. How classical culture is transplanted into new contexts, how texts are translated and performed and how Greek and Roman values are perceived and used continues to be a force in current debates. The main concepts and explanatory frameworks used in the field are introduced through chapters on reception within antiquity and case studies of more recent receptions from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and the USA. The book will be of use to all those interested in the relationship between the arts, culture and society as well as to students and teachers of classical subjects and of literature, drama, film and comparative cultural studies.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Offering compelling insights into the Italian adaptation of diversified English products, this volume is addressed to both scholars and students wishing to delve into the field of reception studies. It focuses on literary, multimedia and audiovisual translation due to the conviction that the modalities through which the imprinting of “Italianness” is marked upon several English hypertexts are still worth investigating today. The contributions here highlight how some choices may, in some instances, alter the meaning as much as the success of some English aesthetic texts, by directing, if not possibly undermining, the audience reception.

Many study the reception of Classical Antiquity today. But why, how and from what conceptual or disciplinary frame? A number of selected representative chapters on these questions illustrate the remarkable diversity and vitality of Classical Receptions Studies and set the agenda for future research.

Reception introduces students and academics alike to the study of the way in which texts are received by readers, viewers, and audiences. Organized conceptually and thematically, this book provides a much-needed overview of the field, drawing on work in literary and cultural studies as well as Classics, Biblical studies, medievalism, and the media history of the book. It provides new ways of understanding and configuring the relationships between the various terminologies and theories that comprise reception study, and suggests potential ways forward for study and research in the light of such new configurations. Written in a clear and accessible style, this is the ideal introduction to the study of reception.

The coming of age of audiovisual translation studies has brought about a much-needed surge of studies focusing on the audience, their comprehension, appreciation or rejection of what reaches them through the medium of translation. Although complex to perform, studies on the reception of translated audiovisual texts offer a uniquely thorough picture of the life and afterlife of these texts. This volume provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of reception studies related to audiovisual translation and accessibility, from a diachronic and synchronic perspective. Focusing on all audiovisual translation techniques and encompassing theoretical and methodological approaches from translation, media and film studies, it aims to become a reference for students and scholars across these fields.

This book examines the reception of rhetoric and the rhetoric of reception. By considering salient rhetorical traits of rhetorical utterances and texts seen in context, and relating this to different kinds of reception and/or audience use and negotiation, the authors explore the connections between rhetoric and reception. In our time, new media and new forms of communication make it harder to distinguish between speaker and audience. The active involvement of users and audiences is more important than ever before. This project is based on the premise that rhetorical research should reconsider the understanding, conceptualization and examination of the rhetorical audience. From mostly understanding audiences as theoretical constructions that are examined textually and speculatively, the contributors give more attention to empirical explorations of actual audiences and users. The book will provide readers with new knowledge on the workings of rhetoric as well as illustrative and guiding examples of new methods of rhetorical studies.