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The main goals of a didactics of literature in the area of teaching English are to explore why and how literary texts should be employed in foreign language teaching and learning processes, which competences can be developed by dealing with literature and which texts are particularly suitable. The didactics of literature is a relatively young subdiscipline within foreign language didactics. It was not established as a scientifically researched field until the 1970s. Though not always recognized as a field in its own right, the teaching of literature looks back upon a long history. It has been subject to constant changes, resulting from several sources: firstly from the history of literary studies, one of the most important neighbour disciplines of the didactics of literature; secondly from general didactic influences; and thirdly from the varying status literary texts have been assigned in foreign language learning from a didactic and an educational-political perspective at different times.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-476-00406-2_37

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