Natalia Hristova
Sofia University
https://doi.org/10.53656/bel2022-5-4-ANHrls
Abstract. This article focuses on the resistance of today's children and adolescents to reading and their distressing school experiences with literature. Drawing on Tsvetan Todorov's research, it reveals some of the internal enemies of literary education, namely the dangerous reduction of literature in school to the instruments of its analysis. This technicist approach results in missing the real point of engaging with literature, and literary education self-destructs in the eyes of students. In addition to alienating students from reading, this conception of literature fails to address their basic needs, namely to better understand the world and learn to know themselves.
Keywords: reading; immersion; boredom; literature reduction; formalism
