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Abstract

Forms of Reading as an Analytical Tool – Restraint or Refinement?

This article discusses a current problem in the research of literary reading and of literature instruction. Which theoretical models are needed in order to describe and to understand the different practices of reading and teaching literature in school? The theoretical concept in focus is form of reading (Swedish läsart), which points to the reader’s particular way of discerning the text. I begin by examining some of the consequences of a long-standing, almost habitual, application within Swedish research on literature instruction of a single theoretical perspective on forms of reading. This perspective is taken from Louise Rosenblatt and involves the orientations of reading which she calls aesthetic and efferent reading. My initial discussion is thus bears upon the problems generated by this kind of theoretical conformity.

In order to broaden the range of theoretical terminology with which students’ reading and teachers’ teaching might be analyzed my own initial idea was to suggest and apply empirically two different perspectives on forms of reading, stemming from Michael Riffaterre and Marie-Laure Ryan. However, since these models, like many others, are wrapped up in complex text theories with implied readers, whose interpretive operations have little resemblance with the interpretive strategies expected from teenage readers in school, even this approach seemed less productive. What we need instead – and this is my main point –, when it comes to examining the different forms of reading advocated in the classroom, is to theorize the practices of reading rather than to abide by already conventional understandings. By reference to the literary orientations in a short sequence from a literature discussion in eighth grade I suggest the term meta-cognitive form of reading.