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    Perrine's Escape and Interpretation

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    eliw
    Introductory notes to a literary studies unit built on the fundamentals of Laurence Perrine's essays from Story and Structure

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Perrine's Escape and Interpretation

    Uploaded by

    eliw
    221 views14 pages
    Introductory notes to a literary studies unit built on the fundamentals of Laurence Perrine's essays from Story and Structure

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    Introductory notes to a literary studies unit built on the fundamentals of Laurence Perrine's essays from Story and Structure

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    221 views14 pages

    Perrine's Escape and Interpretation

    Uploaded by

    eliw
    Introductory notes to a literary studies unit built on the fundamentals of Laurence Perrine's essays from Story and Structure

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
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    The passage discusses different types of readers and different categories of fiction - escape fiction and interpretive fiction.

    Escape fiction is written purely for entertainment, while interpretive fiction is written to broaden understanding of life.

    Escape fiction provides only pleasure, while interpretive fiction provides both pleasure and understanding by illuminating human behavior.

     The first question to ask about fiction is: Why

    bother to read it?


     Unless fiction gives us something more than
    pleasure, it’s hard to justify it as a subject for
    study.
     To have a claim on our attention, it must
    provide pleasure and understanding.
     “The truest history is full of falsehoods, and
    your romance is full of truths” (Diderot to
    Richardson). Most fiction is not, so we
    classify all fiction in two categories.
     Escape Fiction: written purely for
    entertainment – to help us pass time
    agreeably.
     Interpretive Fiction: written to broaden and
    deepen and sharpen our awareness of life.
     Interpretive fiction takes us, through the
    imagination, deeper into the real world. It
    enables us to understand our troubles.
     Escape fiction provides only pleasure.
     Interpretive fiction provides pleasure and
    understanding.
     Escape and interpretation are not two
    separate categories – they are the ends of a
    spectrum.
     How do we decide how interpretive a story is?
     It’s not the presence or absence of a moral
     It’s not the presence or absence of facts
     It’s not the presence or absence of fantasy
     A story becomes interpretive as it
    illuminates some aspect of human
    behaviour.
     An interpretive story presents us with an insight
    – large or small – into the nature and condition
    of our existence.
     It helps us understand a universe that is
    sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile.
     It helps us to understand our neighbors and
    ourselves.
     The escape author is like an inventor who
    creates an invention for our diversion. When we
    push a button, lights flash and bells ring.
     The interpretive author is a discoverer who takes
    us into the midst of life and says “Look, here is
    the world!”
     The escape writer is full of tricks and surprises,
    pulling rabbits out of hats or flowers out of a
    sleeve.
     The interpretive writer takes us behind the
    scenes and shows us how the illusions work.
     This is not to say the interpretive writer is the
    same as a reporter: the interpretive writer
    also uses tricks and illusions, but always with
    the intent of helping us see the world more
    clearly.
     We all begin with fairy tales: many of us never grow
    beyond them - a movement backward as we lose
    the sense of wonder from childhood.
     Makes fixed demands of every story, and is
    disappointed if they're not met.
     Sticks to one genre: sports, western, crime
    drama…
     Looks for a formula:
     A sympathetic (likeable) hero who the reader can
    pretend to be
     A plot that is always exciting
     A happy ending that does not question or disturb
     A theme which confirms the reader’s world view.
     Enjoys fiction that deals with life significantly
    rather than formulas of escape.
     Knows that reading only escape has two
    dangers:
     It may leave us with superficial attitudes toward
    life
     It may distort our view of reality and give us false
    expectations about life
     The individual reader’s preferences and
    emotions often exert a powerful influence on
    how we read and what we read.
     Previous experience in life and in fiction
    inform our ability to grasp a story’s meaning,
    as well as our response to allusions, structure,
    technique and style.
     A perceptive reader must be able to discuss a
    story’s strengths as well as, even in spite of,
    our response to it.
     We have a finite amount of time to read, but
    the book options are nearly endless. We need
    to know two things:
     How to get the most out of what we read
     How to choose the books that will best repay the
    time it takes to read them.

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