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Reading for Life Philip Davis (Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), University of Liverpool)

Reading for Life By Philip Davis (Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), University of Liverpool)

Summary

This volume presents original case-histories of readers to delve into just what reading is and how it works. Each chapter begins with a poem or excerpt which becomes the scene either of a reading-group transcription or of a thought-piece from an interviewed reader to explore therapeutic reading and how culture might impact upon health.

Reading for Life Summary

Reading for Life by Philip Davis (Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), University of Liverpool)

Reading for Life is an anthology of poems and of extracts from prose fiction, related to a series of case-histories of individuals carefully reading, discussing their reading lives, and thinking about the relation of literature to their existence. It enables readers to gain increased imaginative access to the works in question through seeing how they have intensely affected equivalent readers-a novelist, a poet, a doctor, a teacher, an anthologist, but also non-specialists, ordinary people within shared reading groups in many different settings, finding help from literary texts in times of often painful personal need. It is the story of the work done by Philip Davis' research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), at the University of Liverpool, in a ten-year partnership with the outreach charity The Reader, taking serious literature to often neglected communities and struggling individuals through the shared reading-alive and aloud-of literature from all ages. Reading for Life is a detailed account of what reading literature can do for a wide variety of individuals in relation to a wide variety of texts: it will be of interest to serious readers in the wider world as much as to scholars working within literary studies, and to all those involved in thinking about the therapeutic interactions of literature and life in psychology, medicine, and mental health support settings.

Reading for Life Reviews

Davis' subjects have often tried many forms of therapy over many years, and he persuasively argues that literature, with its unpredictable and powerful effects, can help people break out of the rote narratives that therapy can inculcate, and make new and transformative discoveries. Davis, a professor of literature and psychology, trains his critical eye just as closely on the transcripts of the group sessions and interviews as on the literary works, many of which are included in part or in full. * Joanna Scutts, Times Literary Supplement *
Philip Davis is brave in entering long forbidden waters, immersing himself not only in our emotional life as readers but also in the existential questions we have about ourselves, and about what life is. This is how we ought to be teaching literature, or, at least, how we ought to be making this kind of experience available for those who want it. I was so excited reading it, I could hardly contain myself: Reading for Life is a legitimization of everything that makes literature great. * Jane Tompkins, Professor of English, Emerita, Duke University *
Reading for Life deserves to be called transformative. When I was about halfway through Reading for Life, I found myself pulling neglected books off my shelf and reading these rediscovered books with a closer attention to their language and a renewed intensity of response. Reading for Life is a book not only about reading; it has the potential to create a changed reader. * Arthur Frank, Literature & Medicine *
Powerful and urgent, Reading for Life by Philip Davis shows how poetry and fiction can make a difference. * Marina Warner, President of the Royal Society of Literature *
With its extraordinary mix of literature, neuroscience, history, and case studies, this beautifully written book exemplifies the alchemy that can happen when words come to life on the page. Reading can change the trajectory of a life, which changes our society, which propels our future species. Philip Davis shows us why this is so. * Maryanne Wolf, Director at Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice *

About Philip Davis (Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), University of Liverpool)

Philip Davis is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Reading for Life is an account of the work done by his research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS) in partnership with outreach charity The Reader since 2008. He is author of works on Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, George Eliot, Bernard Malamud, and on the uses of memory from Wordsworth to Lawrence, and has written various books on literary reading. He is editor of OUP's series The Literary Agenda on the role of literature in the world of the twenty-first century and a new series entitled My Reading.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1: No Defence against the Words: A Story of Sonnet 29 2: The Schoolteacher 3: The Woman Who Pointed 4: The Woman Who Became a Poem 5: The Brain of Frances 6: The Doctor 7: Experiments with Renaissance Scripts 8: About Time: Three Little Poems 9: The Novel Experimenter 10: The Anthologist 11: The Novelist Afterword

Additional information

GOR010873737
9780198815983
0198815980
Reading for Life by Philip Davis (Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), Emeritus Professor of English Literature, formerly Director of CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society), University of Liverpool)
Used - Like New
Hardback
Oxford University Press
20200212
320
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
The book has been read, but looks new. The book cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket is included if applicable. No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins

Customer Reviews - Reading for Life