Literary works operate within three nested frames that shape their meaning.

Evidence

The nature of this frame is something Amina Yaqin and I explore in our book Framing Muslims. There we are concerned with tracing this encircling discursive boundary as it appears in political rhetoric, journalism, and popular-media texts. Yet a type of framing can be seen at work in literature, too. Literary framing takes place on three levels. First, any act of writing in and of itself is an act of framing; it is an act of bringing together and accentuating themes, issues, and characters as well as of dramatizing the consequences of the collision of different ideas. This is particularly true of what might be called multicultural fictions that focus on relationships between groups with different traditions and value systems. These works always already occupy a terrain contested by warring and hierarchically unequal discourses. However, that framing act then takes place within a much larger frame: the agenda-led frame governing political, media, and journalistic discourses about the key issues defining intercultural relations. In the case of Muslims, these issues have to do with a lack of integration, gender inequality, a propensity for “radicalization,” and so on. Finally, we can see those two acts of framing—the textual and the contextual—as being integral to the way such texts are then placed in the frame governing their production, reception, and recognition as “literary.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 20

Categorization

• DEFINE: Offers the three-level framing model — the core analytical vocabulary distinguishing textual framing, contextual framing, and the literary-recognition frame that governs how Muslim-themed novels get marketed and received.
• XREF: Connects directly to Framing Muslims (Yaqin and Morey) — a hinge to cite Morey’s broader project when analyzing Hamid and Naqvi.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does the third-level ‘literary recognition’ frame differ for Hamid and Naqvi given their different marketing/reception trajectories?