Miall, “Necessity” (2000).
- resistance of literary scholars to empirical research
- what is literary reading decided by theorist (Culler); real readers not worth attention
- empirical studies will acquire a central place, as alchemy was replaced by chemistry
- will arbitrate theoretical claims
- will modify the eloquence or effrontery of literary theorists
- will challenge the current hermeneutics of suspicion
- literary text challenges reader, calls her attitudes into question
- has overlooked most important question: why do people read
- the status of empirical studies; not paradigmatic yet
- claim that status of literary work conferred institutionally
- and other postmodern claims: Ibsch on their being immunized from criticism
- problems of empirical study, as stated by Graesser et al.
- on the canon: works that repeatedly gain new interpretations
- reinterpretation a sign of the inexhaustible vigour of the canonical texts
- working class readers outside any institution were reading canonical texts
- power of literary reading shown by “Changing Lives through Literature”
- response to literary texts: role of vivid imagery, emotion
- Dehabituation. Literary reading offline rehearsal of situations
- studied in Vipond & Hunt’s evaluations; in studies of foregrounding
- validity of “literariness”: perhaps only as a process
- notion of background, supported by Frey on word familiarity
- Decentering. Through entering world of other characters
- studies of personal meaning through literary texts, Halász, Sielman & Larsen
- status of fictionality: signalled by omniscient narrator, by free indirect discourse
- Conclusion. Re-establishing concept of literariness, support of empirical studies
Literariness: see webpage attached to Jan 17
return to course page
Document created, December 10th 2011