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The European Legacy
Toward New Paradigms
Volume 7, 2002 - Issue 5
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Original Articles

On the Relevance of Literature to Life: The Significance of the Act of Reading

Pages 567-577 | Published online: 02 Jul 2010

References

  • Nussbaum , M. C. 1995 . Poetic Justice. The Literary Imagination and Public Life , 1 Boston : Beacon Press .
  • Steiner , G. 1989 . Real Presences , Chicago : The University of Chicago Press .
  • Kundera , M. 1987 . De kunst van de roman , Baam : Ambo . ) (originally in French: L'art du roman, 1986);
  • Kundera , M. 1994 . Venaden testamenten , Baam : Ambo . (originally in French: Les testaments trahis, 1993)
  • Kundera . De kunst van de roman . 121
  • Steiner . Real Presences . 11
  • Dane , J. 1995 . "Lectuur van Satan. Censuur en zelfcensuur in calvinistisch Nederland," . Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis , 2 : 97 – 123 . 119
  • Meijer , W. A. J. 2001 . "Learning by Passion. The Literary Arts Tradition and the Mass Media," . Interchange , 32 (4) : 331 – 348 .
  • IJsseling , S. 1990 . Mimesis. Over schijn en zijn , Baam : Ambo .
  • Ramdas , A. 1997 . "Niemand heeft oog voor het vreemde," . NRC Handelsblad , 14 March : 29
  • Iser , W. 1989 . Prospecting. From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology , 201 Baltimore/London : The John Hopkins University Press .
  • Bailey , C. 1984 . Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education , London : Routledge & Kegan Paul . I borrow Bailey's unexcelled expression here. In the book with this tide
  • Hirst , P. H. and Peters , R. S. 1977 . The Logic of Education , London : Routledge Kegan Paul . he advocates the idea of liberal education as outlined by R. S. Peters, that in defense of the breadth of liberal education includes other domains apart from the arts and the humanities. For a classical statement of the position, see
  • Iser . Prospecting . 202
  • Ricoeur , P. 1988 . Time and Narrative , Volume 3 , 164 Chicago/London : University of Chicago Press .
  • I could, following Ricoeur, have kept the term "mimesis" in the hermeneutical context where reading and texts are understood in their essential historicity. Ricoeur distinguishes, in his Time and Narrative, three forms of mimesis: prefiguration, configuration and refiguration. The very wording already hints at the "action"-character of this concept of mimesis. Indeed, throughout the hermeneutical work of Ricoeur the activity of the reader and the phenomenon of recontextualization are of central importance. It turned out to be perfectly possible, however, to make use of Ricoeur's ideas on the interplay between the world of the reader and the world of the text without using the term "mimesis." This I preferred.
  • Ricoeur . Time and Narrative , 164
  • See Meijer, "The Laboratory of the Probable."
  • her, Prospecting, 10.
  • Stinner , A. 1989 . "Science, Humanities, and Society--The Snow-Leavis Controversy," . Interchange , 20 : 16 – 23 . 17
  • Meijer , W. A. J. 2000 . "Paradigmas Literarios de la Education Humanistica: Una Tradicion Viva," . Nueva Revista de Politico, Cultura y Arte , 71 : 99 – 114 .
  • Steiner . Real Presences . 11
  • Ibid., 80.
  • Thomas , B. 2000 . "Restaging the Reception of Iser's Early Work, or Sides Not Taken in Discussions of the Aesthetic," . New Literary History , 31 : 13 – 43 . Iser is professor at the University of Konstanz and in the US. His work is well known in the US, more than the work of his Konstanzer colleague Jauß on reception aesthetics that in actual fact inspired Iser [cf. Thomas' article in the special issue on Iser's writings:
  • This is part of what is learnt at the very beginning, in the so-called "emergent literacy" of infants (cf. W. A. J. Meijer, "The Laboratory of the Probable. Literacy and the Humanities," Paper presented at the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values, July 2000, Jerusalem).
  • Ricoeur . Time and Narrative , 167
  • Ricoeur , P. 1981 . Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation , 145 Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .
  • Ibid., 139.
  • Ibid., 142.
  • Ibid., 143.
  • Ibid., 191.
  • Iser , W. 1978 . The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response , 182 London/Henley : Routledge & Kegan Paul .
  • Ibid., 191.
  • Ibid., 191.
  • Ibid., 192.
  • Iser , W. 1991 . DK Fiktive und das Imaginäre. Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie , Frankfurt a.M. : Suhrkamp . Ibid;
  • And for Iser with this opposition the traditional idea of mimesis (as representation of reality in works of art) is indeed under discussion as well Cf. the epilogue "Mimesis und Performanz" in Ibid., 481.
  • Ibid., 38.
  • Ibid., 23.
  • Meijer , W. A. J. 1995 . "Book and School On Literacy and General Education," . Interchange , 26 : 1 – 17 .
  • Soetaert , R. and Top , L. , eds. 1996 . Een beeld van belezenheid. Over culturele geletterdheid pen Haag , Nederlandse Taalunie/SDU .
  • See Meijer, "Paradigmas Literarios de la Education Humanistica."
  • Calvino , I. 1997 . The Literature Machine , 125 London : Vintage .
  • Ibid., 132.
  • Ibid., 131-2.
  • Haroutunion-Gordon , S. 1991 . Turning the Soul. Teaching through Conversation in the High School , Chicago/London : The University of Chicago Press .
  • Meijer , W. A. J. 1994 . "Review Article: Sophie Haroutunion-Gordon's Turning the Soul," . Studies in Philosophy and Education , 13 : 77 – 83 . Haroutunion-Gordon compares these "Beiden students" to the "Chalmer students" that she also worked with on the same Shakespearean: sophomores at a private, racially integrated school in metropolitan Chicago. It would carry us too far in the present context to discuss this whole enterprise [see
  • Haroutunion-Gordon . Turning the Soul , 85
  • Ibid., 135.
  • Ibid., 101.
  • Ibid., 105.
  • Ibid., 135.

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