Principles of Critical Story-Reading

Some cognitive psychologists, drawing on the Law of Pragnanz, argue that human conceptual understanding develops as he puts into practice his cognitive faculties of simplification and organization of new inputs through certain preconceived schemata, scripts, and frames. They have articulated this argument within the theoretical frameworks of Gestalt psychology. As such, both simple and critical story-reading, like any other epistemological anamorphosis, should be the product of contemplation in parts of a text at the expense of leaving other parts unread. There is no reading which meticulously takes in a text in all its minutiae, naturally because there is no end to delving into textual details. Readers themselves know by experience that discerning a whole text in its full details, if not far from the normal process of understanding, is definitely not any closer to their own interests. It is in pursuit of such readerly-oriented interests that the potential interpretations of a text get drastically reduced. Of course, the scope of the readability of a piece of fiction is neither as wide as it is likely to be, nor as narrow as still preferred by most of the literary critics. Somewhere in between, the range of the authentic interpretations of a text is restricted – albeit well beyond any strict boundaries – by arbitrary narrative (story-writing/reading) conventions. Setting out from a literary hermeneutics stand, this article aims to approach a number of the socio-cultural assumptions commonly held by the readers of Persian literary fiction.
 
Extended Abstract
 
1. Introduction
According to some cognitive psychologists, the expression of human understanding and perception is founded on simplifying and organizing new perceptions of schemata and prefabricated frameworks. Such a mechanism is explained by psychologists in Gestalt psychology. In this school of psychology, the reading of a story, like any process of anamorphosis or epistemological transformation, is the result of examining some parts of the text at the cost of disregarding some others. Quite expectedly, no reading covers all details as the details of a text are endless. Readers know from experience that paying equal attention to all details of a text is impractical or even by no means close to the ordinary way of understanding. For the same purpose of practicality, both ordinary and critical readings of the text turn into a reductionist act. In other words, in the process of reading, some potential meanings of the text are overlooked.
 
2. Theoretical Framework
The present article relies on the theory of reception, which focuses on defining the readers’ preconceptions of the text and principles of cognitive psychology, which considers understanding to be connected with patterns existing in the readers’ mind and how they are interpreted, to examine the readers’ understanding of Persian fiction.
 
3. Methodology
In this article, by relying on hermeneutic studies, attempt is made to identify and examine the prior knowledge shared by readers of Persian fiction.
 
4. Findings
The range of the readers’ perceptions is curbed by the fiction writing and reading tradition. Reading modern Persian fiction is different from both reading a text closely and skimming it. Unlike these two ways of reading a text, selective reading can be a justifiable method. In this method, not all the details of a story can be examined even in a careful reading. However, selective reading is only one of the requirements of reading a story. It should be accompanied by the ability to organize all the selective micro-readings into a structured whole. In the process of organizing information the overall meaning of a text is formed as the main concepts inferred by the reader are prioritized in their mind. Thus, different readers, depending on where they put more emphasis, organize their overall understanding.
 
5. Conclusion
The task of reading does not come to an end when the reader finishes the text because reading continues for some time after the act of reading the text is completed. Some dark sides of the text are later analyzed by the reader and probably some seemingly unimportant aspects are re-read so that the main ideas put forward by the author are organized in their mind. On the other hand, the reading of a text usually starts before the first sentences of the text are even read, which is why no text is completely unfamiliar to the reader when they embark on reading the text. Relying on their knowledge about the author, readers start reading a new work by an author and continue with it to the end, trying to fulfill what the author expects them as ideal readers. The readers’ knowledge about the background of the text and its mission influences both the process of reading and their final perception.