This book offers new perspectives on the pedagogical value of literary texts. The book is, in the first place, a theoretical study - speculative in nature - about the inherent connection between reading and interculturality. The author argues that reading literary texts may open up a passage to a 'third place', a space in which a student can learn more about their own identity and ultimately arrive at a more nuanced understanding of otherness. Some of the skills implicated in the construction of textual understanding can facilitate intercultural learning, opening up opportunities for a pedagogical approach in which the reading of literary texts develops a student's intercultural perspective and fosters reflection on cultural difference. The author explores the pedagogical potential of the book's theoretical premises through a sustained classroom-based example.

Autorentext

Ana Gonçalves Matos is Associate Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages, Cultures and Literatures, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, and a researcher at CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies). Her research interests include intercultural education; teaching and learning languages, cultures and literatures; translation; intercultural citizenship education; and education through the Arts.

Inhalt

Contents: Reading literary texts as third place and significance for pedagogy - Reading asymmetries and cultural asymmetries - Virtual participation, transformation and imagination - Reader-response and aesthetic experience - Literature and foreign language intercultural pedagogy; individual and collective identities; reality and literary experience - Pedagogical criteria; modes of reading; text choice and a reading model - Classroom experience.