Lire, une histoire simple

This book constitutes the result of a pedagogical experimentation, that I conducted for the Master in Linguistic and Literary Sciences of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, during the academic year 2017-2018. The critical essays that are here collected have been written by some students of my class, and show clearly enough that “to propose that the meaning of literature lies in its use is to open up for investigation a vast terrain of practices, expectations, emotions, hopes, dreams, and interpretations” (Rita Felski, Uses of Literature, 2008). Aiming not exclusively at a better mastery of literary understanding, but more widely at the developing of a “critical thinking”, that is applicable to any dimension of knowledge and practice, the course showed that literature can be “used”, and its study can enhance skills and abilities of a manifold kind, such as text analysis, language skills, but also problem solving, accuracy and creativity.