Defining the Literary Phenomenon

What makes a work literary? How does language alter perception, how does a narrative shape time, and who speaks or sees within a story?In Defining the Literary Phenomenon, Philip Bates explores these questions across fifty essays in literary criticism. Beginning with defamiliarization and the distinctive uses of literary language, the volume moves through interpretation, reception, intertextuality, and the relationship between literature and its readers. It then turns to the structures of narrative: voice, perspective, focalization, reported speech, and the representation of consciousness.The essays bring major theoretical approaches into conversation. Russian Formalism, semiotics, reception theory, deconstruction, and narratology provide different ways of examining how literary works produce meaning. Sustained discussions of thinkers including Jakobson, Bakhtin, Eco, Ricoeur, Genette, Lessing, and Tomashevsky lead to a detailed examination of description, artistic form, and narrative time.This English academic edition preserves the sequence of the fifty essays and includes an editorial preface, explanatory notes, a bibliography, and a glossary of technical terms. It offers students, researchers, and attentive readers a route through the concepts that distinguish literary discourse and illuminate the complexity of fiction.