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How many of us had a favourite woman author whose works we read and reread, whose characters shared our lives and served as touchstones for our own achievements, models for our decisions and listeners to our problems? But if we entered academia such ways of reading and such secret loves had to be abandoned. Perhaps this happens to some degree to everyone who takes up the academic study of literature. Left behind are the indiscriminate hours of reading whatever pleased us, abandoning whatever did not - or could not - because it was dull, boring or ‘edifying’. We learned to accept boredom as part of the discipline of becoming educated. And, if we went even further and actually took up the task of studying literature as our life’s vocation, then our connections with that child-self (who read with a flashlight to finish a book long after she was supposed to be asleep) were forgotten, if not broken entirely.
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