Cognitive principles, critical practice: Reading literature at university (eBook)

Susanne Reichl is professor of contemporary English literature at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna and head of the research platform #YouthMediaLife. Her research interests include time travel stories, children's and young adult literature and media, reading and the teaching of reading and literature, and the way that social media platforms create new book cultures and literary discourses.

Acknowledgements 9
Contents 11
Introduction 17
Part I – Cognition and reading: The basics 33
Part II – Reading literature: The specifics 71
Part III – Reading literature in a foreign language: Contexts and constraints 151
Part IV – Focus on the classroom: Learning and teaching to read literature 211
Conclusion and outlook 313
References 327

"Part III – Reading literature in a foreign language: Contexts and constraints (S. 149-150)

[S]omething has happened in the last decade to turn the attention of scholars in language and literature toward the institutional sites in which they work, including the classroom itself. This is a healthy sign. (Scholes 2003: n.p.)

This part of my study prepares the ground for an enquiry into how literature can be taught in the university classroom. To begin with, educational contexts as such will be scrutinised as to the consequences and constraints they exert on literary reading and understanding processes. As a specific educational context, the university will be explored in order to see how learning and teaching, and especially the learning subject, the student, can be conceptualised in the light of recent debates.

In order to be able to heed the contextual conditions of the specific context I am interested in, I will then introduce a discussion of reading in a foreign language as opposed to the first language, as a basis for an examination of reading in the context of a study course in English and American studies at the University of Vienna.

1. Exploring educational reading contexts

Reading context, for the purposes of this study, is a multi-dimensional concept, referring to a multitude of possible influences. Rand J. Spiro suggests that reading happens in a ”contextual web” (1980: 252), and such a web, for a university context, is made up of factors such as the socio-cultural environment, the national (or international, e. g. European) educational system, the university itself, the study course that a student has chosen, a particular module or class, and, finally, the conditions of one particular reading situation that is required for a class.

In more detail, the sociocultural setting, even though its influence on the reading situation is undoubtedly considerable, is difficult if not impossible to assess. A number of studies focus on the cultural differences of reading processes, 1 and even though the results are interesting, most are based on national differences between readers, and that seems to me to be a gross simplification of the issue. Holding the same passport does not automatically give individual readers a common context that impinges equally on their reading behaviour.2

The sociocultural environment would include factors such as the wider appreciation of literature, of education as such and of university education, none of which are nationally homogeneous. Part of this environment is an educational system, with national and international aspects. Both the educational system and the institutions embedded in it, e. g. the university, are probably rather vague influences, i. e. students will not be aware that the University of Vienna imposes certain restrictions on what they do, but will have a rough sense of what is expected from them at an institution of higher education in general.

Students’ image of their role as university students is crucial, for instance, for whether or not they see themselves as professional readers or whether they see reading as a low-profile pastime. This also applies to the specific study course they have chosen. Here, it is decisive whether students see their classes as contributing to a whole or as separate units of learning with an inherent and implicit aim only. And within this study course, one specific literature class provides an even narrower context for a reading situation, with usually more concrete explicit or implicit aims (be it only the aim to pass an exam)."