Jürgen Pieters | Please Read Carefully: The Healing Powers of Fiction

In this talk I want to read a number of scenes in which the reading of literature is portrayed as a potential source of healing. I want to take the analysis of these scenes as the starting point of a reflection on the specific form of (self-)care that reading can have. In my talk, I will turn to Walter Benjamin, Marcel Proust and Donald Winnicott in an attempt to find healthy food for though.

About the Speaker

Jürgen Pieters is a Professor of Literature at Ghent University (Belgium), where he teaches courses on literary theory, the history of poetics and the use of literature in contexts of care. His most recent book is Literature and Consolation: Fictions of Comfort (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). He is currently working on a new book on forms and practices of bibliotherapy. He is the director of the global network CHARM (Consortium for Health Humanities, Arts, Reading and Medicine).