The signs of the cultural crisis of our age can be seen in education and in literature teaching as well. It has become an urgent task of schools to devise a new, modern ideal of knowledge and the teaching of literature must propagate a view of literature which gives back literature its nature of enjoyable work of art and restores the pleasure of reading, joy in aesthetic experience. A specific "section" of aesthetic and pedagogic hermeneutics is suitable for the completion of this task.
This study presents the conceptional background of a hermeneutic literature textbook (Gyöngyi Orbán, Comrehensive Understanding of Literature) which, considering the cultural state of our age and the problems of education and literature teaching a hermeneutic situation , tries to complete the tasks mentioned above. The study raises the following questions:
How does the function of a hermeneutic textbook change as compared to traditional textbooks? How does the hermeneutic conception work in this textbook? What does it mean to "have a dialogue" with works instead of traditional analysis? What is the language of conversation with works? How does the function of asking, answering and that of conceptual language change? What is the main difference between traditional teaching of literature and literature teaching which promotes the principle of hermeneutic historicity? Is the chronologic order important in teaching literature? Do we need the "world literature context" in teaching Hungarian literature? What is "world literature background" in a hermeneutic sense? What is the role of "attendant arts parallels"? Why does the textbook promoting a hermeneutic view not undertake the so-called "complex aesthetic education" and what does it suggest instead?
