This dissertation examines young people’s reading of fiction in the digital age, with a special focus on the aspects of attitude and competence. The literary reading of respondents in their upper teens is considered from several perspectives—especially those of the respondents themselves. The discussion is based on three larger empirical studies of the reading attitudes and practices of 18-year-olds. These studies build on and complement each other in relation to the overarching research questions through a triangulating process combining qualitative and quantitative methods. The studies are, however, freestanding and were conducted using different empirical methods. The first study is diachronic in that it compares national test essays on the topic of reading from the year 2000 with essays written according to the same instructions twelve years later. The main aim of this study is to reveal possible differences between the two generations in terms of attitudes and approaches to reading fiction, and to relate them to issues of literary legitimization and competence. The second study consists of a questionnaire about a short story read by the respondents, as well as about their general reading and media habits. A connection is drawn between media habits and reading frequency, on the one hand, and the results of the essay study, on the other. The respondents’ reception and understanding of the story is analyzed separately. A summary of the first two studies reveals several complex issues with contradictory patterns. The third study, which examines these issues more closely, was conducted through focus-group interviews. All three studies have been carried out among groups of pupils in the third year of upper secondary school in Sweden. The final part of the dissertation summarizes the results of the three studies, applying a pedagogical perspective to literature pedagogy within the subject of Swedish at the upper secondary level. This discussion points out several opportunities for literature teachers today.

This dissertation brings together aspects of writing-in-the-disciplines research, reader-response theory, and empirical reading research in an investigation of literary scholars reading poems and constructing arguments. I begin with a review of literary criticism published over the past 70 years on Donne's "The Flea," Milton's "Song: On May Morning," Hopkins' "God's Grandeur," and Eliot's "Conversation Galante." This review suggests that certain New Critical interpretive conventions persist in scholarship. In particular, literary scholars continue to read lyrics as dramatic utterances and as organic wholes. I then present findings from a think-aloud study in which English professors read the aforementioned poems and planned a hypothetical conference talk about them for the MLA conference. Reader-response theorists have argued that readers activate certain text-making conventions in order to read literature as literature. In my study, participants' disciplinary reading conventions were so deeply ingrained that their initial processing of the four poems mirrored the interpretive patterns in published criticism of those poems. Next I analyze the think-aloud data and follow-up interviews from the perspective of writing-in-the-disciplines research. Previous researchers found that scholarly literary argument relies on a limited set of special topoi and is not always directed toward the accumulation of new knowledge. The scholars in my study relied more heavily on some topoi during initial interpretation of the poems, while other topoi were used more often during argument planning. The picture of literary argument that emerges is a hybrid of ceremonial rhetoric and communal knowledge building. Finally, I analyze the think-aloud data from the vantage-point of expert/novice research in cognitive psychology. Previous researchers have used the term "generic expertise" to describe expert knowledge that all members of an academic discipline possess. Despite the belief of some within literary studies that their discipline lacks a core, participants in my study demonstrated generic expertise both in their interpretations of poems and in their argument planning. I conclude by arguing that previous descriptions of scholarly literary argument need to be revised. Literary scholars relate to their objects of study in a unique way that ensures the distinctness of literary argument. / text