This article confronts the theoretical tenets of reader-oriented short story collection theory and its implications for a literary analysis of Benni’s Il bar sotto il mare (1987) with the results of an empirical study of 12 readers. Through free recall tasks and open questions, we collected their recall of stories, specific passages, recurring topics and general interpretation to assess the processes of reticulation (i.e. searching for recurring elements in stories) and modification (i.e. modifying initial hypotheses based on the identification of new elements) advanced by Audet (2014). This confrontation revealed noticeably disagreeing results. Our findings suggest that flesh-and-blood readers adopt a more straightforward and intuitive approach when reading and interpreting collections as they are subject to a strong primacy effect, privilege personal appreciation of specific stories and passages, and rely on a disinclination to alter initial interpretative hypotheses. The findings pave the way for further investigation into the readers of SSCs.

本文探讨了以读者为导向的短篇小说集理论的理论原则及其对本尼 (Benni) 的Il bar sotto il mare文学分析的启示(1987) 对 12 位读者的实证研究结果。通过自由回忆任务和开放式问题，我们收集他们对故事、具体段落、重复主题和一般解释的回忆，以评估网络化（即在故事中寻找重复出现的元素）和修改（即基于识别的修改初始假设）的过程。新元素）由 Audet (2014) 提出。这场对抗揭示了明显不同的结果。我们的研究结果表明，有血有肉的读者在阅读和解释馆藏时会采用更直接和直观的方法，因为他们受到强烈的首要效应、对特定故事和段落的个人欣赏特权，并依赖于不愿意改变最初的解释假设。