Literature Class: Ways to a Unique Literary Experience?

Abstract

The present study examines the current state of literature teaching, mainly with respect to tertiary education, including the dominant issues in this field, recent trends as well as major difficulties and concerns influencing and shaping the literature class. The field of literature teaching has been influenced by literary scholarship that has undergone remarkable development and offers plenty of theories and approaches to literature, but also by various educational theories. Particularly, the study introduces the basic theories of literature teaching connected with certain pedagogical inventory that are applied in the literature class and consequently focuses on the underlying principles of reader-oriented approaches to literary text based on Wolfgang Iser’s reception theory that are in terms of literature teaching and students’ motivation to read literature of great importance. Nevertheless, despite the influence of various educational theories it is still important to stress the fact that literature represents a highly specific phenomenon that will always require a very careful and particular treatment.