Abstract

Abstract This article is focused on a practice in interpretive texts that is as common and unavoidable as it is rarely explored: the practice of referring to the fictional world of literary texts. It presents an approach to conceptualize and analyse this practice. Instead of the category ›describing versus interpreting‹ usually used in systematic studies, smaller-scale categories more oriented towards the linguistic surface of the texts are proposed in order to distinguish the referring acts and to be able to capture their diversity. For this purpose, it is useful to ask how the references relate to the literary text and which speech act is in the centre of attention in each case. The article is based on the analysis of a larger corpus of literary interpretation texts and aims at a better understanding of the professional practice.

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