Re-Joining R. L. Stevenson’s and James Reeves’ Poetry for Children through Reader-Oriented Theories

Combining “light” verses with “stodgy” theoretical issues, this book seeks to study the poetry written for children by Robert Louis Stevenson and James Reeves in the light of Reader-Oriented Theories. More concretely, it does not focus on the responses of individual readers, but on the potential reading procedures the poetic texts could inaugurate according to the ideational views of Iser, Rosenblatt, and Riffaterre on the reader and the reading event. Furthermore, it serves to validate an older ascertainment where literary texts for children emerge as the ideal space for challenging and practising theory. The book will be of particular interest not only to scholars, teachers, and critics, but also to “ordinary” readers who would like to re-read beloved poets, such as Stevenson and Reeves, through a different perspective.