Reading for Life
Published on 12. February 2020
Book
Hardback
308 pages
978-0-19-881598-3 (ISBN)
Description
Reading for Life is an anthology of poems and of extracts from prose fiction, related to a series of case-histories of individuals carefully reading, discussing their reading lives, and thinking about the relation of literature to their existence. It enables readers to gain increased imaginative access to the works in question through seeing how they have intensely affected equivalent readers--a novelist, a poet, a doctor, a teacher, an anthologist, but also non-specialists, ordinary people within shared reading groups in many different settings, finding help from literary texts in times of often painful personal need. It is the story of the work done by Philip Davis' research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), at the University of Liverpool, in a ten-year partnership with the outreach charity The Reader, taking serious literature to often neglected communities and struggling individuals through the shared reading--alive and aloud--of literature from all ages.
Reading for Life is a detailed account of what reading literature can do for a wide variety of individuals in relation to a wide variety of texts: it will be of interest to serious readers in the wider world as much as to scholars working within literary studies, and to all those involved in thinking about the therapeutic interactions of literature and life in psychology, medicine, and mental health support settings.
Reading for Life is a detailed account of what reading literature can do for a wide variety of individuals in relation to a wide variety of texts: it will be of interest to serious readers in the wider world as much as to scholars working within literary studies, and to all those involved in thinking about the therapeutic interactions of literature and life in psychology, medicine, and mental health support settings.
Reviews / Votes
Davis' subjects have often tried many forms of therapy over many years, and he persuasively argues that literature, with its unpredictable and powerful effects, can help people break out of the rote narratives that therapy can inculcate, and make new and transformative discoveries. Davis, a professor of literature and psychology, trains his critical eye just as closely on the transcripts of the group sessions and interviews as on the literary works, many of which are included in part or in full. * Joanna Scutts, Times Literary Supplement * Philip Davis is brave in entering long forbidden waters, immersing himself not only in our emotional life as readers but also in the existential questions we have about ourselves, and about what life is. This is how we ought to be teaching literature, or, at least, how we ought to be making this kind of experience available for those who want it. I was so excited reading it, I could hardly contain myself: Reading for Life is a legitimization of everything that makes literature great. * Jane Tompkins, Professor of English, Emerita, Duke University * Reading for Life deserves to be called transformative. When I was about halfway through Reading for Life, I found myself pulling neglected books off my shelf and reading these rediscovered books with a closer attention to their language and a renewed intensity of response. Reading for Life is a book not only about reading; it has the potential to create a changed reader. * Arthur Frank, Literature & Medicine * Powerful and urgent, Reading for Life by Philip Davis shows how poetry and fiction can make a difference. * Marina Warner, President of the Royal Society of Literature * With its extraordinary mix of literature, neuroscience, history, and case studies, this beautifully written book exemplifies the alchemy that can happen when words come to life on the page. Reading can change the trajectory of a life, which changes our society, which propels our future species. Philip Davis shows us why this is so. * Maryanne Wolf, Director at Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
11 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
628 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-881598-3 (9780198815983)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Philip Davis is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Reading for Life is an account of the work done by his research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS) in partnership with outreach charity The Reader since 2008. He is author of works on Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, George Eliot, Bernard Malamud, and on the uses of memory from Wordsworth to Lawrence, and has written various books on literary reading. He is editor of OUP's series The Literary Agenda on the role of literature in the world of the twenty-first century and a new series entitled My Reading.
Content
Introduction
1: No Defence against the Words: A Story of Sonnet 29
2: The Schoolteacher
3: The Woman Who Pointed
4: The Woman Who Became a Poem
5: The Brain of Frances
6: The Doctor
7: Experiments with Renaissance Scripts
8: About Time: Three Little Poems
9: The Novel Experimenter
10: The Anthologist
11: The Novelist
Afterword
1: No Defence against the Words: A Story of Sonnet 29
2: The Schoolteacher
3: The Woman Who Pointed
4: The Woman Who Became a Poem
5: The Brain of Frances
6: The Doctor
7: Experiments with Renaissance Scripts
8: About Time: Three Little Poems
9: The Novel Experimenter
10: The Anthologist
11: The Novelist
Afterword