About the Author

Elias Kreuzmair

E-Mail: elias.kreuzmair@uni-greifswald.de   ORCID logo

Elias Kreuzmair has studied modern German Literature, Comparative Literature, and Sociology at the LMU Munich and the Sorbonne in Paris. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher (“Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”) in the DFG special research area “Transformationen des Populären” at the University of Siegen. His research interests lie in the field of contemporary German-language literature, literary theory, and the history of reading.

Contributions by Author: Elias Kreuzmair

Issue 16
Méta-lecture
reading discourse
reading primer
"Lesesucht"
digital reading
distant reading

On Reading Reading

Fundamental Problems of “Méta-lecture”

It is hard to say anything about the process of reading, Barthes argues, because he considers the text, and especially the literary text to be an object with infinite layers and possibilities. What can be observed is nothing but a burst of ideas, of fears, of desires, of delights, of oppressions. Barthes reflections on “Méta-lecture” point to the more general problems of reading reading. Regardless of where or in which context a text about reading is written, it faces the same fundamental problem regarding its subject even if the texts do not evoke this as a problem: reading is hard to observe […]