This study wants to illustrate the use of the Socratic dialogue in relation to reading comprehension. An intervention with children in third grade at two different schools, one with previous experience from working with Socratic dialogues and one without any earlier experience, has been done. After reading a text, half of the pupils received a Socratic dialogue related to the text. The reading comprehension was tested afterwards with all the pupils. How the reading comprehension is effected by a Socratic dialogue and how the dialogue effects pupils with different levels of reading comprehension and what in the dialogue that could effect the reading comprehension were examined. The results indicate that pupils typically underachieving in the reading comprehension test, could have an advantage of the dialogue if they had previous experienced with it. Without previous experience it seems that the Socratic dialogue could impair the reading comprehension. How well the pupils interact and how the rules of the dialogue are followed seem to be factors that could effect the reading comprehension.

Identification has been a substantial topic for discussion in aesthetics and literature for a long time. Different views on what a text is has opened up for different approaches for how a reader should perceive and position herself in relation to a text. My specific take on the issue of identification is directed on how different theories and literary ideas have concerned itself with emotional and affective responses in the reader, I view this position through what is called postcritique, specifically with the works of Susan Sontag, Toril Moi and Rita Felski. The postcritical perspective have a significantly more positive look on reader involvement and emotional connections with a text which makes it an appropriate aim for discussion in contrast with for instance structuralism. The aim of this essay is to examine reader identification, its possibilities and functions in the literary field. I do this by attempting to unravel the lingering debate about reader involvement and identification which is shown in the texts by Sontag, Moi and Felski. Another part of this essay’s aim is to test the postcritical argument of the reader’s experience and importance to the text, which I mean have similarities with contemporary views on the importance of the individual’s formation of identity. The essay is divided into three parts: introduction, analysis and at last a critique of the postcritical arguments based on what is presented in the analysis. A conflict that is shown and discussed throughout the essay is whether reader involvement reveals the text itself or just the individual reader, which goes down to the base question of “what is the meaning of literature?” In the final part of the essay, concerning the postcritical arguments, I suggest that what is indeed thought to be a new, more broadened way of perceiving texts and literature, there is a focus on the individual in reading, which resembles the contemporary ideology of self-building and a therapeutic tendency which is present in our society. I question whether the postcritical approach truly have the ability to be a subversive reading practise in today’s society.

This essay aims to study if, and how, The Matrix (1999) can be read with a queer perspective and how to use it in a classroom setting to further upper secondary school students to discuss transgender issues and develop their own identity. By analysing the film using a hermeneutic method and a queer perspective the results show that much of the lines, cinematography and costume can be viewed as an expression for transgender and queer. The theoretical framework is mainly related to Judith Butler’s research on doing gender and Malin Alkestrand’s concept of didactic potential. The essay shows the didactic potential of the Matrix (1999) and gives concrete examples of lines, cinematography and costume that can be used to begin conversations in the classroom related to gender, sexuality, norms, and performative gender.