| This thesis inquires into how a teacher and researcher as a model reader might make sense of on-going relationships with fiction and memoir. Drawing on literary anthropology as a research method, hermeneutic inquiry is used as an interpretive framework to examine the relationships among cultural aesthetic forms and practices, representational methods, and experiences of literary engagement. Four texts are used as educational occasions that highlight a research location of literacy. This research location lies in the gap that exists at the intersection of language and culture. Literary engagements are pedagogical sites for learning as they are always an interpretation of relationships with the text and theory. As a philosophical study of literary engagements, this thesis both represents and synthesizes my interpretation of how readers experience works of art. In addition, this inquiry informs teaching practices and has potential implications for curriculum theory. |
