AN ALTERNATIVE READING OF LITERATURE

摘要

Religion is not the only aspect of the human condition that could do with a little more rationality, said some delegates at Beyond Belief II. Jonathan Gotschall, who teaches English literature at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, proposed marrying literary studies with a scientific style of inquiry. Gottsdiall has already made waves among his colleagues by conducting an experiment on how people respond to literature. From interviews with readers about their responses to books, he has shown that in general people have similar reactions to a given text.