Transformed by Literature Insights from Literary Studies, Philosophy, and Education

Over the last few decades, literary studies have produced significant insights
into the formative and transformative potential of literature. In this arti-
cle, we provide an overview of these insights as part of the theoretical-
phenomenological and the empirical-psychological approaches, which help
to understand the complex interactions between the reader and the text.
We argue that these insights benefit the debate on transformative education
and support attempts at developing comprehensive education at universities
(Nussbaum 1997, 2010; Giroux and Giroux 2004; Yacek 2021; Higgins 2024).
Bridging the insights from the different disciplines—literary studies, philos-
ophy, and education—helps to articulate why literature is important in the
university context for providing students with personally meaningful experi-
ences. We show the validity of bridging the different disciplines, discuss several
academic works with interdisciplinary approaches to literature and education
(Edmundson 2014; Bruns 2011; Baena 2022), and argue that work remains
to be done to work out the practical-educational implications for the (trans-)
formative use of literature in the university classroom.