Psychological Aspects of Literary Response. Miall, Kuiken and the Literary Response Questionnaire

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the evolution of research conducted by David Miall and Don Kuiken, with particular attention to the theory of defamiliarisation and expressive enactment. Through a synthesis of the main empirical studies, it highlights how literary reading is conceived as the result of the interaction between textual style, emotional processes and the reader’s reorganisation of meaning. Starting from this theoretical framework, the article relates Miall and
Kuiken’s models to research on the teaching of literature. In this perspective, the validation of the Literary Reception Questionnaire (LRQ) for Italian secondary school students is presented. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of 1,712 lower and upper secondary school students. Factor analysis confirms the validity of the instrument’s seven-factor structure, confirming its effectiveness for the study of literary reception, including in the Italian school context.