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Political Literature and the Response of the Reader: Experimental Studies of Interpretation, Imagery, and Criticism*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
Abstract
The influence of political literature has often proved elusive to empirical political science, partly because of the subjectivity of literary response, and partly because of social science methods which are largely incapable of dealing with subjective phenomena in a satisfactory way. A distinction is made between the experimental methods of expression which focus on objective responses, and the methods of impression which focus on subjective responses. Experimental methods are then applied to interpretations of Golding's Lord of the Flies, to the effects on imagery of reading Mazlish's In Search of Nixon, and to reactions to Burdick's The Ninth Wave. An illustration is also given of the experimental study of literary response in the single case.
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Footnotes
Revised from a paper originally presented at a meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, 1974. Appreciation is expressed to Rondal G. Downing and William Stephenson, both of the University of Missouri – the former for having shown me the importance of literature to the political process, the latter for having shown me how to begin measuring it. Ellen Siegelman was unusually helpful in clarifying matters of both method and substance.
References
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38 The Ninth Wave (New York: Dell, 1975)Google Scholar. Burdick, of course, is not in the same category with Orwell or Golding, but his novel, according to Blotner, “is a competent one in the tradition of tough but intelligent realism. The principal defect is that the story is too episodic, that the events of Freesmith's career give the effect of being spread out so that they fail to build sufficiently to the strong climax which the novel needs.” See Blotner, Joseph, The Modern American Political Novel, 1900–1960 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), p. 86 Google Scholar.
39 It is in this sense, as noted previously, that Q-technique provides an adjunct to experimental method. As Nimmo and Savage have pointed out, the fundamental logic of experimentation can be extended into the field by introducing experimental designs, such as in Table 5, into the data-collection procedure. (See Nimmo, Dan and Savage, Robert L., “Image Typologies in a Senatorial Campaign: A Comparison of Forced Versus Free Distribution Data,” Political Methodology, 2 (August, 1975), 293–318 Google Scholar.)
40 The most sustained attention to the single case in literature has been by Holland, Norman N., 5 Readers Reading (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Holland, , Poems in Persons (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973)Google Scholar. An earlier effort is by Wilson, Robert N., “Literary Experience and Personality,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 15 (September, 1956), 47–57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the theory of single-case design, see Brown, Steven R., “Intensive Analysis in Political Research,” Political Methodology, 1 (Winter, 1974), 1–25 Google Scholar; and Baas, Larry R. and Brown, Steven R., “Generating Rules for Intensive Analysis: The Study of Transformations,” Psychiatry, 36 (May, 1973), 172–183 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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42 In this connection, it is important to recall William James's distinction between what is me as opposed to what is merely mine. M is deeply implicated in factors Ml and M2 in that the images of her self, her ideal self, and relevant others are significantly interrelated. Factor M3, on the other hand, is composed of images that she entertains without apparent self-involvement: They are hers, but are not her in a more fundamental sense. See James, William, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1950), I, 291 Google Scholar.
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44 Relevant works in this area are literally too numerous to mention. In addition to the forementioned, representative titles of direct interest to political science include Clowers, Myles L. and Letendre, Lorin, Understanding American Politics Through Fiction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973)Google Scholar; Edwards, Thomas R., Imagination and Power: A Study of Poetry on Public Themes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Greenbeig, Martin H. and Warrick, Patricia S., eds., Political Science Fiction (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974)Google Scholar; Holland, Henry M. Jr., ed., Politics Through Literature (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968)Google Scholar; Howe, Irving, Politics and the Novel (Cleveland: World, 1957)Google Scholar; Lucas, John, ed., Literature and Politics in the Nineteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1971)Google Scholar; Scattergood, V. J., Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London: Blanford Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and Warren, Robert Penn, Democracy and Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975)Google Scholar. On the political thought of writers, see Calleo, David P., Coleridge and the Idea of the Modern State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Fleishman, Avrom, Conrad's Politics: Community and Anarchy in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Swingewood, Alan, The Novel and Revolution (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The upsurge of interest in literature in related disciplines is exemplified by Coser, Lewis A., ed., Sociology Through Literature, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972)Google Scholar; Fernandez, Ronald, ed., Social Psychology Through Literature (New York: Wiley, 1972)Google Scholar; and Milstead, John W., Greenberg, Martin H., Olander, Joseph D., and Warrick, Patricia, eds., Sociology Through Science Fiction (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974)Google Scholar. As a methodological sidelight, an additional application of Q technique to literary studies, in addition to Stephenson (see note 10), is to be found in Kohlberg, Lawrence “Psychological Analysis and Literary Form: A Study of the Doubles in Dostoevsky,” Daedalus, 92 (Spring, 1963), 345–362 Google Scholar.
45 Skinner, B. F., “A Lecture on ‘Having’ a Poem,” in Cumulative Record, 3rd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1972), pp. 345–355 Google Scholar.
46 Brown, Steven R. and Taylor, Richard W., “Frames of Reference and the Observation of Behavior,” Social Science Quarterly, 54 (June, 1973), 29–40 Google Scholar.
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