Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Changed by Literature?: A Critical Review of Psychological Research on the Effects of Reading Fiction

Changed by Literature?: A Critical Review of Psychological Research on the Effects of Reading... abstract: Our article reviews empirical work that claims to provide evidence for the psychological benefits and effects of engaging with literature. Psychological research has considerable potential for addressing the limitations of traditional reader-response theories, especially if such research is conducted in an interdisciplinary context where literary scholars can actively shape the experimental setup. In the first part of the article we consider the work carried out in this connection by psychologist Keith Oatley and literary scholar Frank Hakemulder, calling attention to a number of important issues that, in our view, haven’t been adequately addressed in their empirical studies. In the second part we turn to our more positive arguments, suggesting that the investigation of the psychological effects of reading cannot abstract from phenomenological data based on readers’ own self-reports. Building on philosophical and psychological views of the self as a narrative construction, we argue that the analysis of readers’ life stories may offer important insights into how literary reading can have an impact on readers. The descriptive, qualitative, phenomenological route is less fraught with presuppositions and normative assumptions than Oatley’s and Hakemulder’s approaches, and deserves being taken into serious consideration. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Interdisciplinary Literary Studies Penn State University Press

Changed by Literature?: A Critical Review of Psychological Research on the Effects of Reading Fiction

Caracciolo, Marco
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies , Volume 17 (4) – Nov 30, 2015
Download PDF
23 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/penn-state-university-press/changed-by-literature-a-critical-review-of-psychological-research-on-M5k8PRnEfP

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Penn State University Press
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University.
ISSN
2161-427X
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

abstract: Our article reviews empirical work that claims to provide evidence for the psychological benefits and effects of engaging with literature. Psychological research has considerable potential for addressing the limitations of traditional reader-response theories, especially if such research is conducted in an interdisciplinary context where literary scholars can actively shape the experimental setup. In the first part of the article we consider the work carried out in this connection by psychologist Keith Oatley and literary scholar Frank Hakemulder, calling attention to a number of important issues that, in our view, haven’t been adequately addressed in their empirical studies. In the second part we turn to our more positive arguments, suggesting that the investigation of the psychological effects of reading cannot abstract from phenomenological data based on readers’ own self-reports. Building on philosophical and psychological views of the self as a narrative construction, we argue that the analysis of readers’ life stories may offer important insights into how literary reading can have an impact on readers. The descriptive, qualitative, phenomenological route is less fraught with presuppositions and normative assumptions than Oatley’s and Hakemulder’s approaches, and deserves being taken into serious consideration.

Journal

Interdisciplinary Literary Studies – Penn State University Press

Published: Nov 30, 2015

There are no references for this article.