Abstract
Abstract
This chapter articulates, in the light of all the preceding, a conception of reading, of literary engagement (or, by extension, engagement with any psychologically mimetic narrative), that exhibits its own complex architecture within the reader’s inner world. The nature of this reading is bifurcated into outward-directed and inward-directed parts. In examining what emerges as this kind of self-compositional reading, this chapter uncovers (a) the often underappreciated role belief acquisition plays in identity construction and the special way that literature allows us an imaginative opportunity to “try on” beliefs, (b) the self-constitutive authority exerted within the act of making resolute decisions concerning what we would do if…, and (c) the refining of self-individuation that ensues from an attentive metaphorical identification with a protagonist.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
Reference184 articles.
1. Aeschylus, Oresteia, trans. Richard Lattimore, in David Grene and Richard Lattimore, eds., The Complete Greek Tragedies, Aeschylus I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), pp. 33–171.
2. G. E. M. Anscombe, “Wittgenstein: Whose Philosopher?,” in A. Phillips Griffiths, ed., Wittgenstein Centenary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 1–10.
3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 1729–867.