The starting point of discussion is disagreement with the standard practices that literary didactics encounters within the teaching of foreign languages: firstly, the marginalisation of literature or literary texts and the associated didactic principles; secondly, the ornamental or instrumental view of literature that sees it as an unnecessary luxury or (ab)uses it as a resource for language practice;
thirdly, the ever more frequent way, clearly apparent in textbooks, of dealing with literary texts that restricts itself merely to superficial language understanding and raises the question as to why such demanding texts are even included; and finally, the way in which, using the excuse of reader motivation, »unpopular« literary texts are reduced to a banal a level as possible, broken up and brought »closer« to pupils through »entertaining« means. In spite of a strong conviction and awareness that
reading motivation is linked to enjoyment and personal experience, this paper develops, in opposition to the practice of the »fun society« (Spaßgesellschaft), the position that when educating language teachers we insist on an awareness of the otherness and foreignness that literature brings to teaching and to society. A range of types of foreignness, from discursive to situational, is used to categorise the sources of teachers’ and pupils’ unease, and through modelling to systematically address and resolve them.
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