Metaphors We Read ByRethinking Literary Experience and Interpretation

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

• Offers three new interpretive metaphors that transform our experience and understanding of literature
• Makes important interventions within many current debates taking place in the field of literary studies, including those relating to postcritique, aesthetics, affect studies, reception, and philosophical approaches to literature
• Demonstrates one way of bridging the divide between lay and professional readers
• Sets forth an innovative approach to literary criticism, drawn from the fields of cognitive linguistics and ordinary language philosophy
• Offers an ambitious experiment in reading and interpretation, which takes up the challenge issued by Rita Felski, in The Limits of Critique, to “try out different vocabularies and experiment with alternative ways of writing"

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.