The article deals with the analysis of literary narrative where a possible unreal fictional world and a possible real fictional world usually coexist. When the norms of life plausibility are consciously violated, the real and the unreal possible worlds are emphatically opposed. Hence, their certain aspects are depicted in a fantastically…

This article explores how literary study engages readers' moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of…

Literature has been an imitator of life for generations on this earth, this literature has voiced the voiceless. Recent contemporary and postmodern literary theories have catered to burgeoning notions of logic that go beyond human survival on the planet. Science fiction is a genre of fiction that encompasses imaginative concepts like futuristic…

This article proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the possibility of Talmudic stories (as well as other narratives and scenes of interactions among two or more characters) to nurture the growth of the moral imagination as it is expressed in two related but distinct ways. At the intersection of work by educators, literary critics, and…

Reacting to incoherent English teaching in the 1930s, Percival Gurrey probed the psychological processes involved in literary appreciation. He sought ways of teaching poetry that avoided lifeless tasks such as labelling "poetic devices." Later, in the 1950s, he wrote about the processes involved in learning to write. At a time when…

We set out to investigate Miller's curious assertion--curious for a deconstructionist committed to a critique of the old metaphysics of presence--that literary works preexist their being written down. We find a basis for this sense of the preexistence of the literary work in Miller's insights about the performative dynamics of reading and writing.…

Children's literature remains a primary vehicle for intellectual and imaginative maturation, and it is thus important to ask whether younger students have the opportunity to transact with books that represent and raise questions about shared experiences and cooperation across social, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. The authors examine three…

Following Scott (this issue), this paper examines how environmental education researchers might intervene to greater effect in the policies and practices of our governments and local and international organizations through individual and collective programmes of research. Suggesting that public scholarship or academic activism can engage a wide…

Traditionally, we English faculty have warned our students against simply identifying with a literary work's characters. For us, such attachments constitute "reading badly." But we engage in identifications, too, including ones with the work's author. A consideration of critical responses to "Benito Cereno" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" enables us to…

This paper contends that art can critique a philosophical claim about the world. Artist imagination can envision how an idea can live and whether the idea is attractive to our living. Cormac McCarthy's novel, "Blood Meridian," narratively illustrates a certain idea of divine determinism and shows that, in terms of war and human cruelty, the idea…

In this article, the author argues that Emerson repudiated the formalism of nineteenth century belletristic, mechanistic, reason-centered, American rhetoric influenced by Hugh Blair. Instead Emerson promoted a rhetoric with imagination at its center, which calls for civic duty. (Contains 33 notes.)

In this book, the author reveals the creative force of children's narrative imagination and shows how this develops through childhood. He provides a new and powerful understanding of the significance of narrative for children's intellectual growth and for learning and teaching. The book explores a series of real stories written by children between…