Prophetic pathos in Isaiah : reading as a Chinese-Canadian woman.

This thesis is a worked-out example of the interplay of I culture- gender-context' and biblical interpretation. It is an interdisciplinary, empirical, and heuristic study. By pursuing a two-centred approach (text-centred and reader- oriented), I seek to look into an important aspect in the inner life of the Isaian persona -- his emotion through a synchronic- literary study of the selected III-Passages (places where the character speaks in the first-person singular voice). Three 'entry points' are established as the foci of textual reading. They are: (1) monologue and self; (2) language of emotion and self; and (3) language of religious faith and emotion. A socio-psychological study of emotion provides the background for the three components of my reader-perspective: Chinese culture, woman Is viewpoint, and Canadian situatedness. In accordance with the empirical emphasis of this thesis, a small scale reader-response survey and interview study were conducted, with the participation of 47 flesh-and-blood readers and two interviewees. overall, this study is a heuristic attempt (in the sense that my methodology is tailor-made to serve my goals) toward a version of culture- gender-context 'specific' interpretation. It provides preliminary suggestions in hammering out the methodological tools applicable to any 'given' culture-gender-context specific' reading.