Reading Response Prompts
 

These prompts are meant to get you thinking about what you have read, and to help focus your thoughts for your reading responses. You can respond to any one of them, or, if you have another idea you would rather explore, you are free to write about that instead. Do not, however, attempt to answer multiple prompts for any assignment. If you choose to pursue an idea of your own or are not writing a response that day, you should still spend at least a few minutes thinking about each of the prompts in preparation for class. For more information, review the listserv assignment.
Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading 1-53

Manguel begins this book autobiographically and describes in some detail how he became a reader. Presumably, if you are in this course and considering getting a degree or minoring in English, or (maybe especially) if you chose this course as an elective, you also consider yourself a reader. Reflect on those experiences that shaped your reading and your relationship to books.

As Manguel notes, scientists struggle to define what exactly happens when we read, how we convert marks on a page into language and ideas. (This is true even though the book is now over two decades old.) As strange as the ideas of intromission and extromission may sound, they have their counterparts in critical theory. Some critics today tend to describe a text as an artifact, whether cultural or psychological. Other critics presume a voice behind the text. In the former case, a text is metaphorically a corpse, a body upon which we can operate or which we can even dissect. This essentially corresponds to the idea of extromission. In the latter case, a text speaks to us, acts upon us, moves us, even convinces or annoys us; this corresponds to the idea of intromission. How do you experience a text? Which view of the text makes more sense to you? Which one is more useful for the study of literature?

Manguel’s discussion of silent reading in contrast to reading aloud surprises most readers. Few people today imagine that at one time silent reading was virtually unknown. Discuss the contrast between reading silently and reading aloud. Most of you probably read silently virtually all the time. Are there times you do read aloud? Why? What about the experience of reading changes when you speak the words? When you read silently, do you read at a pace at which you imagine hearing the words or do you read so quickly that the experience is solely visual, so that you progress from experiencing the text visually to comprehending it without ever hearing it, even internally?
 
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