القراءة والقارئ : صور في البلاغة الأدبية

The Literary Agenda

by Philip Davis, فيليب دايفيس, زينة الطفيلي (ترجمة)

يقدّم كتاب القراءة والقارئ حجة دفاع عن قراءة الكتب الأدبيّة الرزينة. إذ يوفّر الأدب أرضية قابضة لاستكشاف الوجود الإنسانيّ. فيبتدع نُزلاً يتاح فيه الاستفادة من تجربة الفرد لا تجرّع مرارتها فحسب، والتدبّر بأفكار هي ربّما غبر مسلّم بها غالباً أو ملاحظ شذوذها، وتشييد مكان للتأمّل الوجدانيّ يتوسّط الدّين والعلمانيّة. فتمسي القراءة ضرباً من ضروب الترحال بين أطناب العصور والأمصار وشتّى الأذهان العائد على القارئ ببدائل عن أيّما نظرة تقليدية للعالم.

في حقبة من عمر الزمن، فيها الفنون والإنسانيات عرضة لشيء من التهديد، يصبو كتاب القراءة والقارئ في آن إلى تضييق ما بين نمط تفكير الكتاب والقرّاء من هوّة وجلب التفكير الأدبي إلى تفكير العالم المعتاد.

Genres: Literary Criticism

288 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Philip Davis is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Psychology at the University of Liverpool where he was Director of the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society. His publications include Sudden Shakespeare, Shakespeare Thinking, In Mind of Johnson, The Victorians (volume 8 in the new Oxford English Literary History Series), Why Victorian Literature Matters and Reading and The Reader (OUP Literary Agenda Series of which he is general editor). He is currently editing the complete works of Bernard Malamud in three volumes for the Library of America. He is editor of The Reader magazine.

Reviews

[Hameed Younis · Rating 2 out of 5]

يقدم الكتاب فكرة حول الجدل الدائر في موضوع (أرضية الأدب القابضة)، وكيف كان الأدب على العموم، والشعر على وجه الخصوص، يوفّر نزلاً لكل قيمة إنسانية. وكأنه يناجي الروح البشرية، يتكلم ويصغي إلى منطوق الحياة وذاته في الآن نفسه.. وإذ يتقسم الكتاب إلى ثلاثة فصول: (لا مسميات بل أماكن)، (حسّ يعني كينونة)، (الأرضية القابضة والعالم). جادل فيها البعض من شعر شكسبير، ويليام وردزووث، هنري جيمس، فيليب سيدني، صموئيل دانيال، توماس هاردي... وغيرهم الكثير
الموضوع لا يلتقي كثيراً مع العنوان (البلاغة الأدبية)، وكان مقتصراً وغير جذاباً في أكثر مقاصده.. والأهم من كل ذلك، أن الترجمة مبتدئة جداً وخجولة جداً جداً

[سارة ناصر · Rating 3 out of 5]

يحلل بعض القصائد والشخصيات الأدبية ويسقطها على واقع القراء.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could have been really good. For example, insights such as the following touch upon ideas that we don't consider when writing or reading:

. . . I think that wraith of meaning exists not only when you cannot find the right word but also after you have found it--in the release of meaning surrounding a verbal breakthrough, the ghost of competing words invisibly surrounding the finally chosen ones.

But the book is bogged down with 1) references to poetry, which is not exactly the same as prose; it requires a different type of reading 2) references to literary works that seem to exist as common and accessible ones in the author's personal list of favorites, but which could have been substituted for better-known and more accessible works to include a broader audience, and 3) academic jargon, which masks clarity and detracts from meaning. For example:

. . . non-fictional prose is a medium of discourse, ostensibly without exceptional advantages and possessed of a merely horizontal ongoingness, which may provide a quasi-basic test of the struggle of serious writing to think in the world.

Unless "horizontal ongoingness" has a more interesting meaning, this book is an unnecessarily dry read, resulting in disappointment that the author could not more forthrightly present the ideas or make them more inclusive. If the author's agenda of this work was to alienate and bore, then the book achieved its purpose.

[(Alice) Aley Martin]

meh

[Mal58 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Davis' approach: quote a difficult and uninteresting piece of literature, then make some obvious or indecipherable point about it at great and extremely tedious length. For instance he quotes a long and tedious poem by Hardy about a chap finding himself jilted. He suggest there is something really special about the last line of the first stanza 'You did not come' being separated by a space from the first line of second stanza 'You love me not'. It supposedly creates a 'holding ground' for the reader to have some great thoughts on the subject. I wasn't having them, apart from perhaps, 'I'd be better of reading Tolstoy or George Eliot about these matters than Hardy or Davis, great authors should give me some great thoughts rather than expect me to have them...'

And so it goes throughout the book. Davis makes a point, I don't get it, or it seems banal, or it seems absurd, or it seems very laboured. Davis suggest there is a crisis in the humanities. Yes there is, and it's exemplified by this book. For me the crisis pans out in finding it difficult to find something interesting to read because there are so many critics & professors, like Davis, leading me down the garden path into a desert.

[Liam Guilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will have to reread this. I'm not sure if the fact I can't summarize his argument is a credit to the book or a criticism. I think Davis is performing his argument, which makes it a compliment. Unlike the Poetry book in this series which follows a familiar pattern, Davis, adducing evidence from psychology, and modern attempts to map the brain while reading, argues for the value of literary reading, not in terms of an extraneous value, but because it is unique and valuable way of thinking, with literature making available a space for a specific type of thinking in and about. I'm also fairly sure I think he's right but I'm not sure how convincing the book would be to someone who disagreed from the outset.

Both the books I've read so far in the Literary Agenda series seem to have this same problem. If they are arguing a case, who are they arguing with?