Why Study Literature?
Published on 11. October 2011
288 pages
978-87-7124-249-2 (ISBN)
Description
This book presents new ways of thinking about the historical, epistemological and institutional role of literature, and aims at providing a theoretically well-founded basis for what might otherwise be considered a relatively unfounded historical fact, i.e. that both literature and the teaching of literature hold a privileged position in many educational institutions. The contributors take their point of departure in the title of the volume and use narratological, historical, cognitive, rhetorical, postcolonial and political frameworks to pursue two separate but not necessarily related questions: Why literature? and, Why study? This collection brings together theoretical studies and critical analyses on literature as a medium among, and compared to, other media and includes essays on the physical and mental geography of literature, focusing on the consequences and values of its reading and studying.
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Jan Alber | Stefan Iversen | Louise Brix Jacobsen
Why Study Literature?
Book
11/2011
Aarhus University Press
€56.77
Shipment within 10-20 days
Content
- Cover
- Title page
- Colophon
- Contents
- Introduction
- Why Study Literature?
- The editors
- Reframing Literature
- Why Literature?
- Some possible answers to the question "Why Study Literature?"
- Mediality
- Locality & Temporality
- Humanity
- References
- MEDIALITY
- Meaning as Spectacle: Verbal Art in the Digital Age
- Marie-Laure Ryan
- The spectacularization of language
- A technological typology of texts
- Category 1: Naturally generated linear texts for print
- Category 2: Naturally generated linear texts presented on the computer screen
- Category 3: Naturally generated database texts for print
- Category 4: Naturally generated database texts performed on the computer
- Category 5: Computer generated texts for print
- Category 6: Texts generated and presented by computer
- Dysfunctional language
- Return to functionality
- Bi-medial texts
- Networking
- Conclusion
- References
- A Defence of (the Study of) Literature
- or: Why (the Study of) Literature Cannot Be Replaced by Cultural Studies and Film (Studies)
- Werner Wolf
- Literature and the study of literature - increasingly outmoded activities?
- 'Literature' in today's academic studies
- Major general functions of literature, and why literary studies cannot be replaced by Cultural Studies
- Qualities and functions specific to literature, or what might happen if Fahrenheit 451 became reality?
- Conclusion: Literature as an irreplaceable medium and literary studies as an equally irreplaceable research and educational institution?
- References
- Mediality and Literature
- Literature versus literature
- Morten Kyndrup
- The Centrifugality of Literary Studies
- What is Literature?
- Time
- Space
- Sign System
- Fictionality
- Enunciation
- Literature's Mediality
- Why Study Intermediality?
- References
- LOCALITY AND TEMPORALITY
- Literature as Global Thinking
- Svend Erik Larsen
- Why (study) literature?
- Texts without borders
- Textual interaction
- Language in a media landscape
- Translation
- Global literature?
- Literature as aesthetic experience
- To see things for the first time
- The translocal perspective
- References
- Not Another Adult Movie:
- Some Platitudes on Genericity and the Use of Literary Studies
- Sune Auken
- References
- Models and Thought Experiments
- Brian McHale
- Models
- Modeling-For, or, Thought Experiments
- Don Quixote, or, Learning from Science Fiction
- References
- Literary Studies in Interaction
- Anne-Marie Mai
- Modern literary values and the literary opposition
- The highly diverse literary landscape
- Text Rain - an example
- Interdisciplinary collaboration
- Creative reading and writing
- References
- HUMANITY
- On the Differences between Reading and Studying Literature
- Magnus Persson
- Lay reading and professional reading
- Linguistic competence and literary competence
- Bridging the divide - towards a third way of reading
- References
- Aesthetics and the New Ethics:
- Theorizing the Novel in the Twenty-First Century
- Dorothy J. Hale
- References
- The Ethical Implications of Unnatural Scenarios
- Jan Alber
- The Impossible Temporality in Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium
- The Unnatural Narrators of the 18th Century
- The Transparent Minds in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway
- The Impossible Characters in Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine
- The Unnatural Space in Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park
- Conclusion
- References
- The Force of Fictions
- Richard Walsh
- References
- Contributors
