LATEST DISCOUNTS & SALES: PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

$75.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Oxford University Press
20 February 2020
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.

By:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 232mm,  Width: 160mm,  Spine: 23mm
Weight:   676g
ISBN:   9780198815983
ISBN 10:   0198815980
Pages:   320
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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.

Reviews for Reading for Life

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 * 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 *


See Also