Psychological inquiry into literary interpretation:: the response to literature

The expression "response to literature" indicates an interdisciplinary field of research arising from the interplay between two perspectives: one connected with the humanistic tradition of literary studies, the other with a large field of psychological research on text comprehension. In comparison with early studies on text comprehension, which focused on the cognitive aspects of text processing, research on response to literature explores a wider variety of experiences: emotional reactions, evocative defects, personal beliefs, attitudes, and so on. Attentional focus is on the contextual dimension of reading, and, more precisely, on the influence of cultural community on text interpretation. What is interesting in this perspective is to examine if and to what degree readers show ways of interpretation drawn from their cultural communities. Implications of these researches are both theoretical and practical. From a theoretical point of view an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature leads us to reflect upon the complex polymorphic nature of the literary phenomenon. From a more practical point of view, the study of interpretative processes gives useful indications and suggestions to those whose role it is to "work" with literary works.