Hasan’s paper has been deliberately positioned fi rst in the volume, as it intimately addresses the most vital theoretical and methodological issues concerning the book’s general topic, and does this in such a way that the paper also serves as an essential background to the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)-based contributions which follow, but not solely. She begins with underlining the complexity of the nature of the activity of engaging with literature, admitting that the multiplicity of resources that supports the creation of a literary artifact also implies that there will necessarily be many different ways of doing this.