Thresholds

How literature becomes a personal journey

Elaboration is a key factor
in reading engagement

"Thought of the Week" for July 5, 2004

In You Gotta Be the Book, Jeffrey Wilhelm wrote about his own study of reluctant readers.

...elaboration becomes a key indicator, and in fact a prerequisite, of the link between participating in a story world and moving along a continuum toward a more reflective exploration of those experiences as a spectator. Iser (1978), as well, has pointed out that elaboration is the key to personal understanding gained through reading. Bruner (1986) goes so far as to argue that the elaborations can be interpretated as the most vital element of the story world. "Literary experiences invite the reader to consider implicit meanings, multiple perspectives and the subjectification of reality." This operation of the "subjunctive mode" is what constitutes the power of literature, "the trafficking in human possibilities versus settled certainties" (p. 35). Elaboration is the exploration of possibilities, of extending what is known, of probing character thought and attitude.

Jeffrey Wilhelm. (2007). You Gotta Be the Book. New York: Teachers College Press. (pp. 69-70).

Comment:

Reading as an opportunity
to remake the self

by Reg Harris

Copyright © 2004 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 7, 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.

Mark Muldoon (1997), discussing Maurice Merleau-Ponte's belief that literature has the potential to redefine and expand the self, wrote:

As we enter into both the historical and fictive texts of our present "world," the hardened understandings of the practical field become open for revision; more importantly, our identities, with reference to these texts, become open for a re-evaluation, and possibly offered new strategies of engagement. In reading, we appropriate the author's horizon that, in turn, becomes an opportunity for a self-description, a redescription that is foremost a rereading of oneself in the world.

In other words, when we engage ourselves in a story, we open to reinterpretation our sedimented (fixed, unquestioned) understandings about ourselves and our world. As we appropriate the ideas in the story, we have the opportunity to reform the meanings that constitute our self and redefine our relationships with the world. When we view reading in this way, we realize that stories give our children opportunities not just for learning about the subject of the story, but to revise and expand their sense of self―to redefine who they are. If we were to begin thinking of helping out student "grow" from a story rather than "learn about" a story, our teaching would focus less on analysis and more on individual interpretation and application.

Muldoon, M. S. (1997, Winter). Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty on Narrative Identity. The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 71, pp. 1-18. Retrieved on February 7, 2002, from http://www25.brinkster.com/ marcsgalaxy/merlric.htm