Readerly/Writerly Texts
Eyes

Readerly texts are those aimed at confirming a coherent subject, where the author usually takes a third person omniscient perspective. These texts usually have a linear, and even teleological structure, ending with an event that resolves complications developed in the text, or somehow restoring social order. Novels are the primary example of readerly texts, although experiments such as dUlysses or The Satanic Verses clearly do not interpollate a bourgeouis subject. Writerly texts are those texts that are fragmented, often apurposive, and non-linear. Barthes distinguishes the former from the latter by saying that the fomer produce pleasure, whereas the latter produce "jouissance", bliss, and break the barriers between reader and world. Readerly: Jane Austin, A Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace. Writerly: Surrealist texts, Finnegans Wake, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Light in August.

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