Hey everyone! I’m using one of the MACS at work, and I am a miscrosoft user, so I have no idea how to get the book titles underlined. I wanted to post in time, but when I get home I will update things. Sometimes I really hate technology!
Annotated Bibliography
Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
When discussing the literature that appears on Oprah’s booklist, Winfrey place a great deal of emphasis on the role of the author. By placing a great deal of emphasis on the author, Winfrey blurs the difference between fiction and nonfiction. I use Eco’s text in order to discuss the role of the author as a way of showing that Oprah is not removing the writer far enough from the work of fiction.
Fick, Thomas H. “Toni Morrison’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’: Movies, Consumption, and
Platonic Realism in The Bluest Eye.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern
Language Association. 22.1 (1989): 10-22.
In my paper, I discuss how the reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye differs depending on who is approaching the text. In order to show the difference between the readings of the literary scholar verse the average audience member, I compared the popular themes discussed in scholarly journals to the popular themes discussed on the Oprah Winfrey website. Fick’s article is one of the journals that I used to prove my claim that Oprah’s audience members leave the texts suggested on the Winfrey site with superficial readings.
Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of
Television. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006.
I focused on one particular chapter of Fitzpatrick’s text to establish my argument. Fitzpatrick’s text suggests that writers who agree to accept the Oprah Winfrey stamp of approval place their work at the risk of being reduced by the masses. I agree with Fitzpatrick’s claim, and use my entire paper to back it up.
Harpo Productions, Inc. Oprah. 4 April 2008. 27 March 2008 http://www.oprah.com.
I use the Winfrey website to show the typical reading experience of Oprah’s audience members. The website includes author biographies, interviews, discussion questions, and online forums where readers can go to have conversations about the text. I strictly focused my attention on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and the site showed me the aspects of the text that Oprah and her staff find of importance.
Harris, Jennifer and Watson, Elwood, eds. The Oprah Phenomenon. Studio: University
Press of Kentucky, 2007.
The following text examines the origins of Oprah’s public image and its substantial influence on politics, entertainment, and popular opinion. I hope to use this text in order to prove that Winfrey has become a household name, and people turn to her daytime television show for guidance. In addition, I want to show that Winfrey uses her public popularity in order to promote the ruling ideas, so that she remains a dominant force in society.
Johnson, Nan. “Reader-Response and the Pathos Principle.” Rhetoric Review. 6.2
(1988): 152-166.
Oprah’s website places the greatest emphasis on what readers gain from the text. Although Oprah does not classify this at reader-response theory, her site makes it clear that this is what she, as well as her staff, views as important. I use Johnson’s article in my paper, to show the similarity between the claims Oprah and her audience members make on the site and the definition of reader-response theory and the pathos principle.
Kuenz, Jane. “The Bluest Eye: Notes on History, Community, and Black Female
Subjectivity.” African American Review. 27.3 (1993): 421-431.
In my paper, I discuss how the reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye differs depending on who is approaching the text. In order to show the difference between the readings of the literary scholar verse the average audience member, I compared the popular themes discussed in scholarly journals to the popular themes discussed on the Oprah Winfrey website. Kuenz’s article is one of the journals that I used to prove my claim that Oprah’s audience members leave the texts suggested on the Winfrey site with superficial readings.
Marx, Karl. “Capital.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael
Ryan. 2nd ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2004. 665-672.
I plan on using Karl Marx’s take on the Bourgeois and the Proletariat to explain Winfrey’s influence on the general public. I want to show how Winfrey uses her empire in order to secure her place as a dominant force in the society. By promoting her empire, Winfrey is getting her audience members to adhere to the ruling ideas. Winfrey’s audience members adhere to these ideas, for they view Winfrey as a “mother-like” figure that they can trust. In addition, I want to show that Winfrey transmits the ruling ideas through the repetition of images that appear in the media –the television and the internet, etc.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume, 1970.
My entire paper suggests that when writers allow Oprah to stamp the cover of their texts with the Winfrey seal of approval, some of the texts meaning may be lost in translation and/or reduced by the masses. In order to prove my argument, I compare the reading of literary scholars to the reading of Oprah’s audience members. In order to narrow down my research, I selected one book in particular that is featured on the Oprah Winfrey book list. I decided on Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, because she is a respected author and her work is studied in many of today’s classrooms at both the high school and college level.
Tannen, Deborah. “The Time 100.” Time. Ed. Time Inc. 1 April 2008 .
This particular article, which appeared in Time magazine, discusses the influence Oprah Winfrey has over the general public. The article pays close attention to the influence Winfrey has on the female public, and how female audience members strive to be like this American icon. In addition, in the article Winfrey discusses her book club and she suggests on more than one occasion that the books on her list directly correlate to her life; in other words, she feels as though she is the main characters of these texts, and the author is speaking directly to her. I plan on using this article to show how problematic Winfrey’s take on literature is, for it reduces the overall meaning of the texts appearing on her list.
