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- Title
Sudden Dignity in the Act of Reading.
- Authors
Davis, Philip; Magee, Fiona
- Abstract
This essay argues that it is literature, and the serious reading of literature, which offers a sudden emotional experience of human dignity, realized anew through the care of its language. Case histories are provided from the work of The Reader, a charitable organization bringing live shared reading to hard-to-reach communities. The research was conducted by the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), at the University of Liverpool. CRILS analysed the effect of literary texts on the heightened language of the participants themselves in the reading groups, revealing often neglected inner resources stirred by literature to bear the troubles and indignities of existence. These ordinary non-academic readers are able to register that emergent transformation from trouble into achievement not only vicariously through the texts they read at the time but also by seeing, later in interview, filmed excerpts of their own creative responses during the reading sessions.
- Subjects
UNIVERSITY of Liverpool; FILM excerpts; CHARITIES; DIGNITY; READING; EMOTIONAL experience
- Publication
Literature & Medicine, 2020, Vol 38, Issue 2, pN.PAG
- ISSN
0278-9671
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/lm.2020.0021