A whole class of people is largely missing in contemporary Anglophone literary studies: readers. This dissertation argues that readers matter to our understanding of literature and merit study as an independent object of analysis. I make the case for the value of studying readers through ethnographic analysis of reading communities across four contemporary organizations that claim to use literary reading and discussion for a particular social end. Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) is an alternative-sentencing program that claims to use literary reading and discussion to reform criminal offenders. Reflection Point is a professional training organization that claims to use literary reading and discussion to improve workplace productivity. The Reader is a charitable organization that claims to use literary reading and discussion to support people’s mental health. And Reese’s Book Club (RBC) is a media company that claims to use literary reading and discussion to empower women. By studying these communities of readers — by analyzing, as I call it, “literature in action” — we develop a clearer picture of literature as a social object. Neither, in absolute terms, autonomously resistant nor instrumentally reducible, literary texts are material forms with context-dependent yet medium-specific effects that are activated in particular contexts of reception. Literature is not simply whatever people do with it. However, at a time when literary scholars are making claims for the social value of literary forms even as “serious” literary reading seems to be becoming ever-more socially marginal, it is important to develop an understanding of how literature has effects and how literature is valued by readers now, if we are to make more substantiated claims about its social status and function. Through ethnographic research of these four reading communities, I show how readers — engaging with an aesthetically and generically broad range of literary texts — put literature to use in ways that diverge from the stated aims of their organizations and that complicate common assumptions about literature’s social value.

Brian John Hooper. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-149). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Preface --- p.iv / Introduction --- p.vi / Chapter Chapter One: --- """The Matrix and Fusion in Hong Kong Anglophone Literature""" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- """The Matrix and its Malcontents in Acheson's Flagrant Harbour´ح" --- p.39 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- """Lee's Running Dog´ح" --- p.65 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- """Mo's Signifying Monkey King""" --- p.76 / Conclusion --- p.106 / Bibliography --- p.109

This thesis is an analysis of the manner in which the persona and works of Ben Jonson were appropriated – between the Restoration, in 1660, and the retirement of David Garrick, in 1776 – to reflect the political and social concerns of the age. Unlike previous studies, rather than primarily focusing on the stage history of Jonson, I analyse a wide range of sources – produced both within and outwith the theatre – in order to explore, across a variety of media, a breadth of material which appropriates the playwright and his works. I shall consider in my first main chapter the appropriations of Jonson within the Restoration court, in particular noting the assimilation of the playwright's work to what might be styled a proto-Tory ideology, as well as the way in which his plays could mirror the destabilising effects of the king's romantic liaisons. In my second chapter, I explore the moral reformation at the turn of the eighteenth century, in which we can see appropriations of Jonson which cast his works as being primarily didactic. The third chapter moves the narrative of the thesis into the years of the premiership of Sir Robert Walpole. I shall consider the way in which the playwright's works – especially The Alchemist and Eastward Ho! – were seen as being especially relevant to an age of speculation and mercantile endeavour, as well as examining the manner in which the figures of Sejanus and Volpone were appropriated to mock the increasingly unpopular premier. In the final chapter, I shall offer an analysis of Garrick's seminal portrayal of Drugger in the contexts of the political philosophy of the mid-eighteenth century, considering the manner in which it was interpreted alongside the character's further appropriations by Francis Gentleman. The thesis concludes by exploring political appropriations of Jonson up to the present day.