Despite the proliferation of online forums for the discussion of literary texts, very little has been written to date on the management of these spaces and how this helps frame the kinds of discussion and interpretative work that take place. This article draws on a series of interviews with moderators of online book-related sites, alongside close analysis of online interactions between moderators and users to consider issues of authority, hierarchy, power and control, asking how these act to structure or facilitate acts of interpretation taking place online. We begin by outlining the moderator's role before conducting a brief review of existing scholarship on offline reading groups and online communities, to identify how social infrastructures are established and negotiated. The main body of the article draws upon interviews with moderators of two online literary forums -The Republic of Pemberley and The Guardian's online Reading Group -to explore the ways in which each of the respective moderators frames his or her role. This is accompanied by an in-depth exploration of how the forms of interpretation we find on the two sites are shaped and directed by the moderators. The article concludes by reflecting upon some of the issues raised by this study and its methodology, particularly with regards to digital dualism and the blurring of the boundaries between the public and the private in online spaces. Keywords Moderators; interpretation; interpretive communities; social reading; reading formations; digital dualism; internet studies AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank Myretta Roberts and Sam Jordison for their wit and insight in responding to our questions.

The paper presents findings from a small reader response study conducted in February 2013 with 150 children aged 7-11 in which they discussed extracts and clips from Roald Dahl's Matilda (1988) and its cinematic adaptation (1996). Dahl and Matilda were chosen because they provoke emphatic responses from adults, often commenting on the effects of Dahl upon young readers, and thus exemplify the uneasy interface between adult perception of children's literature, and the child reader. Frequently the criticism and theory applied to children's literature are an adult's comments speculating on the child's interpretation of the child character created by an adult and, with a few exceptions, critical theory surrounding children's literature has shied away from reader response studies.After reviewing the critical literature surrounding the book and film of Matilda, we summarise the responses to these texts given by the children in a variety of formats. The children's understanding of heroism and their responses and reactions to Matilda as a hero-character are used to reflect upon the established scholarship. The paper aims to balance literary adult criticism with audience interpretations of this very interesting heroine and in doing so add to our understanding and appreciation of the effect and effectiveness of Dahl's work.

Abstract

There are strong thematic, structural, aesthetic, cultural, and historical links between the Gothic and comics in Britain and America. These include themes such as appropriation, absorption, and inversion; the use of psychoanalytic and Gothic/horror motifs; structural devices such as embedded narratives, overwriting strategies (“retroactive continuity”), and the problematizing of the texts' own (non)fictional status; textual parallels such as comics' aesthetic of excess and ability to visually shock and horrify; and shared cultural factors such as a strong subcultural status and sense of delegitimacy, which has nonetheless allowed for the construction of a canon and reclassification as “literature.”

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