Literature and understanding : the value of a close reading of literary texts / J.W. Phelan.
Literature and Understanding investigates the cognitive gain from literature by focussing on a reader's close analysis of a literary text. It examines the meaning of literature', outlines the most prominent positions in the literary cognitivism debate, explores the practice of close readin...
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Electronic eBook |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY :
Routledge,
2021.
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Series: | Literature and education series.
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Subjects: | |
Local Note: | ProQuest Ebook Central |
Summary: | Literature and Understanding investigates the cognitive gain from literature by focussing on a reader's close analysis of a literary text. It examines the meaning of literature', outlines the most prominent positions in the literary cognitivism debate, explores the practice of close reading from a philosophical perspective, provides a fresh account of what we mean by understanding' and in so doing opens up a new area of research in the philosophy of literature. This book provides a different reply to the challenge that we can't learn anything worthwhile from reading literary fiction. It makes the innovative case that reading literary fiction as literature rather than as fiction stimulates five relevant senses of understanding. The book uses examples of irony, metaphor, play with perspective and ambiguity to illustrate this contention. Before arguing that these five senses of understanding bridge the gap between our understanding of a literary text and our understanding of the world beyond that text. The book will be of great interest for researchers, scholars and post-graduate students in the fields of aesthetics, literary theory, literature in education and pedagogy. |
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Physical Description: | 1 online resource |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
ISBN: | 9781000200980 1000200981 9780429321382 0429321384 9781000201147 1000201147 9781000201062 1000201066 |
Biographical or Historical Data: | J.W. Phelan is Director of Studies in Philosophy at Wolfson College and at Homerton College, Cambridge. His research focusses on many different issues in the philosophy of literature and literary criticism. |