The Formative Influence of Literature. Analogical Thinking, Statements, and Identification
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Anders Pettersson
Readers often relate literature to life, and this may give literature the capacity to influence individuals and communities. The connection between literature and life is usually supposed to come about because literary texts convey explicit or implicit statements, or because readers involve themselves in the events described in the text through identification, empathy, or simulation. A third mechanism is the centre of attention in this paper: readers draw analogies from the literary text to reality. Elaborating on my earlier analyses of analogical thinking and similar processes, I suggest that actual reactions to literature must sometimes be understood as resulting from mental operations, in which the reader sets up an analogy between a textual element and something in the world outside. Such reader-made analogies between literary texts and the world are crucial in understanding how literature can influence people. However, analogical thinking provides merely a general model for understanding how readers of literature form ideas about the real world. One often has to analyze the processes in finer detail, and thus develop more specialized descriptions and concepts.
© Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction. Identity, Community, and Comparative Literature
- Cosmopolitanism and Identity: Challenges for Comparative Literature
- Narrative Identification
- The Formative Influence of Literature. Analogical Thinking, Statements, and Identification
- Grillparzer's “The Poor Musician”: The Artist-Hermit in Search of a Community
- The Apocatastasis of Community in Late Burroughs
- The Condition of “East Asia” Discourse. Theory and Practice of De-homogenization
- First Nations Identity, Contemporary Interpretive Communities, and Nomadic Legacies
- Conditions of Identity in Writing or: about a Genocide
- (Mis)taken Identities. Myths of Origin in a South African Familienroman
- Aufklärerische Metaphysik. Walter Benjamin zu Nikolaj Lesskov und Johann Peter Hebel
- Krieg und Gartenpartys. Oberflächen des Politischen bei Rainer Maria Rilke
- Rezensionen
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction. Identity, Community, and Comparative Literature
- Cosmopolitanism and Identity: Challenges for Comparative Literature
- Narrative Identification
- The Formative Influence of Literature. Analogical Thinking, Statements, and Identification
- Grillparzer's “The Poor Musician”: The Artist-Hermit in Search of a Community
- The Apocatastasis of Community in Late Burroughs
- The Condition of “East Asia” Discourse. Theory and Practice of De-homogenization
- First Nations Identity, Contemporary Interpretive Communities, and Nomadic Legacies
- Conditions of Identity in Writing or: about a Genocide
- (Mis)taken Identities. Myths of Origin in a South African Familienroman
- Aufklärerische Metaphysik. Walter Benjamin zu Nikolaj Lesskov und Johann Peter Hebel
- Krieg und Gartenpartys. Oberflächen des Politischen bei Rainer Maria Rilke
- Rezensionen
