Foregrounding

One major research area in the empirical study of literature pertains
to the role of foregrounding (i. e., stylistic deviations and parallelism) in the
reading process. The associated phenomena are arguably key to understanding
what distinguishes literary reading and essential for the investigation of its impact on readers’ interpretation and aesthetic appreciation. We trace the origins
of the concept back to Aristotle and follow various theoretical elaborations in
the works of twentieth-century literary scholars and linguists, right up to the
moment when developments took an empirical turn. We will see that the original scholarly assumptions were inspiration for an impressive amount of qualitative (e. g., think-aloud studies and in-depth interviews) and quantitative (e. g.,
experiments, neurocognitive studies) research. The results have deepened our
insights about the way textual foregrounding affects readers’ experiences and
how these experiences may be associated with carry-over effects (e. g., critical
thinking abilities). Besides the state of the art in all the relevant lines of research, we offer readers a comprehensive overview of the many remaining problems that require further (perhaps interdisciplinary) study.