ABSTRACT
Pedagogic Literary Narration comprises how teachers structure and organise reading of novels for study and how they signpost and direct reading. This chapter considers how the form of the focal study text influences book group conversations about literature, and the nature of interaction that develops around the text even where no teacher is present. How do book group members position themselves and others in the absence of a teacher, to the text and to the act of reading? Transcripts suggest the narrative form of the study novel has a bearing on how participants discuss texts: the institutional discourse of specific narratologies is not accessed with the intent it might be in a school or university setting, though participants develop in their conversation a co-constructed analysis of the focal text narrative. Three key questions shaping analysis of conversation in this chapter are:
How does explicit identification of Daddy-Long-Legs as an epistolary novel arise in the conversation?
How does Daddy-Long-Legs, as an instance of an epistolary novel, enter conversation?
How does the entry of the text as an epistolary novel influence the progress and structure of the conversation?
Analysis concentrates on the genre of the focal study text, its entry to conversation in the form of small stories and how it influences patterns of interaction.
