ABSTRACT
Resistance to reading relates to the reader’s resistance to an authentic, live involvement in the experience of reading literature. First, the relevant terms ‘true and false self’ ‘submission’, ‘surrender’ and ‘resistance’, are introduced. False and resistant reading is then illustrated in Proust’s seventh volume of In Search of Lost Time: ‘Time Regained’ (1927). The transformative reading described by Proust as ‘recapturing’ cannot be actualized while the false self or the detached self are in control of and defending the hidden true self. The false reader actively blocks dynamic, participatory, reading. Only the true self can enable the mind to play and to experiment within the transitional space of the literary work. Transformative reading is open only to the reader who is willing to transcend the narrow confines of the already known and who dares to play in the transitional space of the text in which the true self is the central participant.
