In this article we set out to explore and discuss reasons for reading literary texts in university curricula of foreign languages. Our analysis is based on 2 sources of information: 16 syllabi of Spanish as a foreign language and a questionnaire in which 11 university instructors teaching these syllabi express their intentions. We point to a number of risks when emphasis is predominantly placed on instrumental goals such as acquisition of vocabulary and grammar or cultural knowledge. We suggest, instead, that the literary modules within language curricula should formulate their own specific goals. Rather than privileging linguistic and cultural competences to be trained, the literary modules could, for example, raise students' awareness of the facts that there are many ways of reading a text but that interpretation nevertheless remains a historically situated and constrained activity.

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This articles examines how the interaction between the verbal and the visual relates to the reader-oriented strategy "ambiguity" in eighteen translations of Hans Christian Andersen's tale "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" as compared to the source text. The translators' and the illustrators' different decisions regarding the textual elements that lead to ambiguity are compared to each other in an attempt to uncover the mechanics of ambiguity at work in the different translations. Theoretically, the article is based on Iser's (1978) textual approach towards the act of reading, and Oittinen's (2000) work on the visual and the verbal in translation for children.