Why Literature?: The Value of Literary Reading and What It Means for Teaching

This bold, innovative, clear, and well-argued book not only gives an answer to the question 'Why Literature?' at a time when many people doubt its value. It also makes detailed recommendations, in the light of the answer given, for how literature should be taught. We need literature, Cristina Vischer Bruns argues, because a literary work is an ideal example of what D. W. Winnicott, one of the founders of object relations psychoanalysis, calls a 'transitional object'-an object, that is, halfway between the self and the external world. Such an object aids in the (primarily unconscious) discovery and transformation of the self. Bruns's teaching agenda is based not only on this theory of literature's 'why,' but also on her long face to face experience in the classroom. Rather than stressing analytical reading, she argues, teachers should encourage self-reflection in students about what happens to them in 'immersive reading.'