Excerpt from the opening lecture
Usually, those who study literature consider it as a cognitive target, as an object of historical or interpretative examination. This time, we're going to change our point of view and reflect on what happens when a certain intimacy is established between literature and its audience, when the reader surrenders to the work. This abandonment is possible, first and foremost, because the worlds of fiction, however strange, fantastic or mythologically charged they may be, always remain human. The temptation to explore them also has something to do with the fact that we are never quite identical to the lives we lead. The 'other' life offered by fiction invites us to exercise, without visible risk, an option inscribed in this imperfect identity, which consists in distancing ourselves from our own lives. But the pleasure of escape alone is not enough. We give in to the attraction of a work because it "indicates something through itself" (Hegel): ideal elements, whose truth fascinates us. These elements, once expressed (often with the invaluable aid of historical knowledge), are not the object of mere knowledge, but are the target of a recognition, a welcome, similar to those we offer to real people and their concerns. Like the confidences of a friend, the meaning of a literary work is entrusted to our care. Not to listen to it, not to grasp it, is not simply to make a mistake, it is to misunderstand it. And since, thanks to the links that are established between us, the readers, and the work, this meaning is entrusted to us, to ignore it is, in a certain sense, to betray it. I'll conclude by saying that, far from being an invitation to moralism, reflection on the intimacy between literature and the reader, and on the reader's loyalty to the work, is likely to shed light on the task of literary aesthetics. From this perspective, aesthetics must include reflection on the means - old or new, tried or untried - that prepare and invite the audience to accept the meaning of a work.
