Development of reading literacy through the analysis of the gothic poetics of the novel “Wuthering Heights” (E. Brontë)

Abstract

The article is devoted to substantiating the pedagogical effectiveness of analyzing the Gothic poetics of E. Brontë’s novel “Wuthering Heights” as a tool for developing reading literacy under conditions of digitalization, clip-like perception, and the decline of slow reading practices. The consideration of the novel is proposed not in the logic of reduction to the plot and a set of character traits, but as work with a highly complex artistic object that requires decoding multilayered meanings, maintaining a nonlinear chronology, and recognizing the semantics of artistic form. It is shown that the Gothic aesthetics of the “terrible” and the “sublime” create cognitive tension that stimulates interpretive activity and the formation of skills for testing hypotheses based on textual details. The theoretical framework is built on the integration of literary studies, psychological-pedagogical, and hermeneutic approaches, drawing on reception aesthetics, the concept of the zone of proximal development, systemic-structural analysis of poetics, comparative-typological comparison of educational strategies, content analysis of curricula, and narratological examination of the “story within a story.” It is argued that the binary chronotope (Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange) trains the ability to read spatial metaphoricity, connect landscape with psychological states, and perform operations of comparison and generalization. The multilevel system of narrators forms “critical distrust” and the differentiation between fact and interpretation, which is relevant for orientation in the contemporary information field. Emotional responses to motifs of the uncanny are translated into hermeneutic reasoning, sustaining stable motivation for deep reading and tolerance for semantic uncertainty; the ambivalence of Heathcliff fosters rejection of black-and-white evaluations, while linguistic complexity (dialectisms, allusions, metaphorical language) strengthens linguistic attentiveness and expands vocabulary. The significance of dialogic forms of discussion, visualization, and ethical and sociocultural analysis (including a gender perspective) is emphasized as conditions for the transition from intuitive impression to metacognitive reflection, making it possible to assess the relevance of the proposed model for designing literature classes and developing universal reading competencies.