PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM IN THE STUDY OF LITERARY TEXTS

Abstract

The reading of literary texts is not the same as reading expository texts as they offer different kinds of information to the readers. Expository texts deal mostly with facts. Literary texts, on the other hand, deal with life stories; and being life stories, will also incorporate (among other things) human behavior, different geographical, cultural, and political settings and perhaps a host of other things. If literary texts contain all these information, how can readers be made aware of them? Psychological realism offers that possibility by allowing readers to reconstruct each aspect of information offered in a text through the different "angles" or "perspectives" that they choose to view it. It is a process that allows for the creation and recreation of new texts out of the same text - not marring content but weaving instead a beautiful and colourful tapestry out of these pieces of creation.