Metaphors We Read By: Rethinking Literary Experience and Interpretation - Hardcover

Thompson, Lucas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 139954618X ISBN 13: 9781399546188

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2025

Synopsis

Metaphors We Read By proposes a metaphorical approach to reading that offers new ways of understanding literary experience and interpretation. It shows how a certain set of metaphors relating to depth and distance have dominated literary studies for many decades, before offering alternative ways of understanding what it means to read and interpret fiction. Taking up recent calls to experiment with new styles, moods and methods of reading, this book shows how we can reimagine aesthetic experience and literary interpretation by using three alternative metaphors: reading as method acting, as overhearing and as perfectionist pursuit. In doing so, Metaphors We Read By intervenes within many lively debates taking place in the field of literary studies, offering important new insights on affect, aesthetics, ethics, reception and philosophical approaches to literature. Drawing on a wide variety of twentieth- and twenty-first century novels, this ground-breaking book shows how metaphorical reading opens up compelling new ways of understanding fiction.

About this title

About the Author

Lucas Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in English & Writing at the University of Sydney. He teaches and writes on contemporary US and Anglophone literature, ordinary language philosophy, literary aesthetics, and film and television. He is the author of Global Wallace: David Foster Wallace and World Literature (2016), along with a wide range of journal articles, chapters in edited collections, public essays and reviews.

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 139954618X
• ISBN 13: 9781399546188
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240