Abstract
This article presents a tool of fictional analysis for secondary education that aims at providing standards of interpretation and allaying fears of standard imposition. The semantic core of the tool adapts the deontic, alethic, and axiomatic modalities used in Doležel (1998). Four “extensions” are added to this core – “cultural,” “visual,” “(meta)cognitive,” and “epistemic” – which above all mediate between student experience and pure abstraction, and invite students to think with and about tools and texts rather than blindly apply models. The relationship of the tool with literary theory and the appropriate age for learning such a tool are also discussed.
About the author
Daniel Candel (b. 1969) is a professor at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares 〈daniel.candel@uah.es〉. His research interests include neo-Victorian literature, the representation of nature and epistemic discourses (science, history, religión, and aesthetics) in fiction, and thinking tools for fictional analysis and their application in secondary education and undergraduate studies. His publications include “Transgression and stability in Graham Swift's Waterland” (2001); “Ein Bild hielt uns gefangen: The Da Vinci Code and the Humanae Vitae” (2007); “The pitfalls of dispensing with teleology: Feeling and justice, evil and nature in Graham Swift's The Light of Day (and Waterland)” (2008); and “Why Julian Barnes couldn't possibly miss God” (2011).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
