Description
| Product ID: | 9780367563424 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Series: | Literature and Education |
| Title: | Literature and Understanding |
| Subtitle: | The Value of a Close Reading of Literary Texts |
| Authors: | Author: Jon Phelan |
| Page Count: | 182 |
| Subjects: | Literary theory, Literary theory, Literary studies: general, Philosophy: aesthetics, Philosophy and theory of education, Teaching of a specific subject, Literary studies: general, Philosophy: aesthetics, Philosophy & theory of education, Teaching of a specific subject |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating This book investigates potential cognitive gain from the close analysis of literary texts. Providing a challenge to the anti-cognitivist position, it argues that cognitive gain is relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of literature. The author locates cognitive gain in the verstehen tradition and identifies five relevant senses of understanding to make the innovative case that reading literary fiction as literature stimulates the relevant senses of understanding. Using examples such as irony, metaphor, ambiguity and repetition, it shows that relevant senses of understanding may bridge the gap between understanding a literary text and understanding the world beyond the text. 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. |
| Imprint Name: | Routledge |
| Publisher Name: | Taylor & Francis Ltd |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2022-04-29 |
