{"id":30356,"date":"2012-07-14T10:02:04","date_gmt":"2012-07-14T15:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=30356"},"modified":"2012-07-13T06:31:53","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T11:31:53","slug":"oh-no-dont-tell-me-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/14\/oh-no-dont-tell-me-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh No, Don’t Tell Me That!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From Stanford<\/a><\/strong>: (HT: DT)<\/p>\n

BY\u00a0CORRIE GOLDMAN
\nThe Humanities at Stanford<\/a><\/p>\n

Those long summer days spent reading by the pool might not be so lazy after all.<\/p>\n

Readers of literary works by the likes of Samuel Beckett, St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9 and Geoffrey Chaucer are getting lots of exercise from these personal trainers for the brain.<\/p>\n

New research by Stanford\u2019s\u00a0Joshua Landy<\/a>, associate professor of French and Italian, illustrates how authors throughout the ages have sought to improve mental skills like rational thinking and abstract thought by leading their readers through a gantlet of mental gymnastics.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the common practice of mining fictional works for moral messages and information, Landy\u2019s theory of fiction, outlined in his new book, \u201cHow to Do Things with Fictions<\/a>,\u201d presents a new reason for reading in an age when the patience to tackle challenging pieces of writing has dwindled tremendously.<\/p>\n

Reading fiction \u201cdoes not make us better people in the moral sense, whether by teaching us lessons, making us more empathetic or training us to handle morally complex situations,\u201d said Landy.<\/p>\n

However, for those interested in fine-tuning their intellectual capacities, Landy said literary works of fiction can offer \u201ca new set of methods for becoming a better maker of arguments, a better redeemer of one\u2019s own existence, a person of stronger faith or a person with a quieter mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landy\u2019s new \u201cformative fiction\u201d theory advises against a utilitarian search for meaning or information that results in an \u201cI got what I need and I can move on\u201d attitude. His theory implies that readers will get much more out of a text by lingering over passages, contemplating ideas between reading sessions and re-reading passages after some reflection.<\/p>\n

According to Landy, the formative fiction approach makes complex texts more accessible to non-academic readers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you realize that some of the arguments are simply not supposed to work at all, Plato\u2019s dialogues become less forbidding,\u201d Landy said. Readers still have to invest effort, but \u201cyou aren\u2019t always asking yourself \u2018what does it\u00a0mean<\/em>?\u2019 and \u2018why don\u2019t I\u00a0understand<\/em>?'\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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