Metaphors We Read by - by Lucas Thompson (Paperback)

About the Book

An experiment in reading and interpretation, which shows how different interpretive metaphors transform our experience of literature.

Book 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.

Review Quotes

In this engrossing book Lucas Thompson quotes George Eliot's wonderful line, 'It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!' And changing the metaphors -- of reading, of interpretation, of criticism -- is precisely what Thompson brilliantly does. Metaphors exert great but often hidden power on our thinking; here that power is revealed.-- "Garry L. Hagberg, author of Living in Words: Literature, Autobiographical Language, and the Composition of Selfhood"

In this remarkably original book, Lucas Thompson argues that the metaphors we read by shape aesthetic experience and interpretation. Drawing on metaphors people ordinarily use about their literary reading experiences, Thompson offers us a set of fresh and imaginative suggestions for how to read fiction after critique.-- "Toril Moi, Duke University"