Literature and Reading

Abstract

This article examines anthropological approaches to fiction reading. It asks why the field of literary anthropology remains largely disinvested of ethnographic work on literary cultures and how that field might approach the study of literature and reading ethnographically. The issue of the creative agency of fiction readers is explored in the context of what it means to ask anthropological questions of literature, which includes the challenge of speaking back to dominant approaches grounded in forms of critical analysis. Finally, the article looks to recent work in the anthropology of Christianity on Bible reading and engagements with biblical characters to open up new questions about the relationship between fiction reading and temporal regimes.

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