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is aligned with its addressee, Aquin’s widowed partner Andrée, the letter’s legiti mate audience. Like her, the reader accesses the letter in full knowledge of Aquin’s death. In an interview that precedes the letter Andrée says: “I was some what apprehensive about reading it [the letter], not because I was expecting there to be revelations in it, but knowing he was dead it gave me an odd feeling seeing Hubert’s handwriting. . .” (Sheppard 2003: 695). Like her, the reader too encoun ters Aquin’s handwriting, this trace of Aquin’s body, and is expected to experi-ence Andrée’s “odd” feeling, not just read about it. In being programmed to repeat what Andrée did and felt, the reader acts as her (uncanny, anonymous) alter ego. The reader, in a way, bestows his/her own flesh onto the character that exists as a textual construct. Another way of putting it would be to say that the physicality of the letter calls forth the embodied reader and becomes the site of the encounter of three bodies: Aquin’s, Andrée’s, and the reader’s. This overlap is indeed a moment of an uncannily “visceral reading” (CrannyFrancis 2005: 37).
DOI link for is aligned with its addressee, Aquin’s widowed partner Andrée, the letter’s legiti mate audience. Like her, the reader accesses the letter in full knowledge of Aquin’s death. In an interview that precedes the letter Andrée says: “I was some what apprehensive about reading it [the letter], not because I was expecting there to be revelations in it, but knowing he was dead it gave me an odd feeling seeing Hubert’s handwriting. . .” (Sheppard 2003: 695). Like her, the reader too encoun ters Aquin’s handwriting, this trace of Aquin’s body, and is expected to experi-ence Andrée’s “odd” feeling, not just read about it. In being programmed to repeat what Andrée did and felt, the reader acts as her (uncanny, anonymous) alter ego. The reader, in a way, bestows his/her own flesh onto the character that exists as a textual construct. Another way of putting it would be to say that the physicality of the letter calls forth the embodied reader and becomes the site of the encounter of three bodies: Aquin’s, Andrée’s, and the reader’s. This overlap is indeed a moment of an uncannily “visceral reading” (CrannyFrancis 2005: 37).
is aligned with its addressee, Aquin’s widowed partner Andrée, the letter’s legiti mate audience. Like her, the reader accesses the letter in full knowledge of Aquin’s death. In an interview that precedes the letter Andrée says: “I was some what apprehensive about reading it [the letter], not because I was expecting there to be revelations in it, but knowing he was dead it gave me an odd feeling seeing Hubert’s handwriting. . .” (Sheppard 2003: 695). Like her, the reader too encoun ters Aquin’s handwriting, this trace of Aquin’s body, and is expected to experi-ence Andrée’s “odd” feeling, not just read about it. In being programmed to repeat what Andrée did and felt, the reader acts as her (uncanny, anonymous) alter ego. The reader, in a way, bestows his/her own flesh onto the character that exists as a textual construct. Another way of putting it would be to say that the physicality of the letter calls forth the embodied reader and becomes the site of the encounter of three bodies: Aquin’s, Andrée’s, and the reader’s. This overlap is indeed a moment of an uncannily “visceral reading” (CrannyFrancis 2005: 37).
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ABSTRACT