Olivia Fialho (2024). Transformative Reading. Linguistic Approaches to Literature Vol. 42. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. DOI 10.1075/lal.42

Many, if not most, avid readers have experienced profound encounters with works of fiction or poetry that have left a lasting impact on them.In a study of the reading habits of 194 library users, Catherine Ross (1999) found that 60% reported that a particular book (in the majority of cases, fiction) had significantly helped them in their lives, typically describing the experience as a form of awakening that "offered an enlarged set of possibilities in their lives" (783)(784)(785)(786)(787)(788)(789)(790)(791)(792)(793)(794)(795)(796)(797)(798)(799).And yet, although it has always been a central premise in hermeneutics that "the work of art has its true being in the fact that it becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it" (Gadamer 2003: 103), it is only in recent years, with the surge of interest in the affective dimension of reading (see e.g., Felski 2009) in aesthetic philosophy, neuropsychology and various forms of bibliotherapy, that scholars have begun to systematically research what may be termed transformative reading experiences.One of the difficulties facing researchers is that though such experiences are widespread, they occur only rarely and unpredictably.So how can we gain access to them?