Tag Archives: Reading

Links Between Bloom, Glenn, Greene, Elbow, and Lovitt

As I digested this week’s readings, I noticed a common thread running through each chapter of When Writing Teachers Teach Literature: the writing. I’m not trying to be facetious here. It was immediately apparent from the first paragraph of each chapter that these professors taught writing. Their essays were some of the most lucid and engaging readings we’ve tackled this semester. Even Glenn’s journal-style essay held my interest and engaged me in a way that Scholes (even at his most coherent) did not.

Apart from style, the chapters also had another element in element. Each addresses the difficulties of engaging students. How to draw them in, how to hold their interest, how to get them to care (in some way) about the assigned material. But, as many of us know, it is not always enough to engage students. Students may enjoy or connect with a text and still flounder when it comes to an activity that requires original thought. From a teacher’s perspective, the other “half” of engaging students, is providing them with the tools or some method to respond to the text analytically.

But how to strike this balance? Though the teachers featured in When Writing Teachers Teach Literature vary in their approaches, they all grapple with this basic question. IMHO, the best summation this problem is articulated by Brenda M. Greene in her essay “Reinventing the Literary Work.” She wonders “how to help [students] connect with a text and yet create enough distance from it to discuss the text analytically” (178).

Because these texts are linked by this basic question, I often found myself flipping back and forth between essays as I read. For instance, Glenn’s discussion of her student Dan’s refusal to change his basic “controlling idea” (is “thesis” a bad word these days?) struck me as an example of what might happen when a student is engaged in a text, but not removed enough to apply analytical tools and craft a “valid” response to the material at hand. If a student did not really care about the text, would he not simply rework his essay to reflect his teacher’s comments?

Likewise, Lovitt’s frustration with the “missed” potential of student journals struck me as the flipside of the coin. Students, especially dedicated students, often have a hard time recording their personal reactions, questions, and revelations in journal entries. They don’t fully engage with the text—instead they read for theme or “hidden meanings” (230). Such lackluster journal entries convinced Lovitt that students simply viewed the journal entries as nothing more than “another onerous academic observation” (230).

Lovitt, Glenn, Greene, et al each offer their own solutions to this problem of balance in literary study. Because they are writing teachers, they use writing assignments to get students engaged and thinking critically.

The most appealing approach, from my perspective (as a student and an eventual teacher), would undoubtedly be Greene’s (and Bloom’s) emphasis on creative writing or “reseeing” literary texts. Because criticism and analysis can be daunting, creative writing assignments in which the writer captures the voice of a “silenced” character provide an opportunity to analyze and critique without the pressure of producing a “typical” essay. Such assignments give new (and arguably real) meaning to Scholes’s semantic-laden phrase “text against the text.”

Sara

“Why don’t you study something useful?”

I have always loved words. Even before I knew how to read, I was enthralled with books, handwritten notes, and other objects that contained those foreign markings. I used to flip through books, front-to-back, back-to-front, and upside down, just imagining what the words meant. By third grade, I had told my mom that English—particularly spelling and reading—were my favorite subjects. Science was O.K. Math was tolerable. But reading and spelling involved words, and words I loved.

As I left high school for college, I discovered new subjects and interests. I switched majors many times and eventually ended up with the good ol’ practical government major with a concentration in sociology—otherwise known as the civil service/pre-law track.

These days, when I mention my undergraduate degree in government and pre-law, most people respond with raised eyebrows and nods of approval. Perhaps it’s just the nature of the DC area, but this choice seems to impress, or at least elicit a positive response. When I mention I am currently pursuing a M.A. in English, more often than not, I get some variation on “Why don’t you study something useful?” All too often, I find myself unable to provide a prompt and witty shutdown. I usually mumble something vaguely intelligible about “civilization’s greatest acheivment” and back out of the conversation.

Perhaps this says more about the people I know than anything real about perceptions of the study of literature; then again, perhaps not. In The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers, Sheridan Blau points out that the study of English—literature instruction in particular—is under threat at all levels of education. He identifies the school-to-work movement and the politics of reading as two specific sources of this problem in primary and secondary education (58).

A larger problem, however, is the overarching perception that the study of literature is something that is frivolous, or somehow not connected to “real” or “practical” skills. Blau’s carefully reasoned debunking of this misperception is the most impressive and compelling argument I’ve read so far this semester.

Blau identifies the traditional text-based approach to teaching literature as playing a large part in the perpetuation of the idea that literary analysis is light on reasoning or critical thinking skills. According to this model (still in practice in most high schools and many universities), students come to class prepared to “absorb” their teacher’s comments on literature—that is, to hear a lecture about an author or genre, or perhaps to take notes as their teacher analyzes a particular text. As Blau points out, however, this model cheats students and perpetuates a culture of “pseudo-literacy” and “interpretive dependence”:

My role seemed to be to present my students with the fruit of my intellectual labor…The role undertaken by my students, then, was largely not to be persons who performed acts of learning themselves, but to serve as witnesses and recorders of my learning (55).

Blau asserts that this model of learning and instruction produces students who are unable to analyze literature with confidence. In more extreme cases, it produces students with no idea of how to actually read and interpret a text. But the troubles do not stop with students. This model produces teachers who are similarly unsure of their own abilities to teach texts they have not previously encountered.

Blau’s main goal with The Literature Workshop is to reverse the role of student and teacher—or at least to fundamentally change the way students and teachers approach literary texts. Students must be invited and encouraged to take part in the interpretive process. Further, teachers and students alike must begin to see reading as method of constructing meaning. They must both abandon the commonly held view that reading is a solitary act and acknowledge the usefulness of collaborative thought and discussion in interpreting meaning.

In short, the study of literature is as intellectually rigorous—and much more practical—than any class designed to teach critical thinking. (Aside: Having taken a gen-ed required critical thinking course, I can personally attest to this point. We spent at least three weeks assessing the logic of statements like “Cottage cheese is delicious and nutritious. Therefore, you should eat cottage cheese.”) To underscore Blau’s thesis, literary study has the capacity to “teach students an intellectual discipline that defines critical thinking in every field and fosters academic success in every subject of study” (57).

There is no greater evidence for this point than The Literature Workshop itself. Whether Blau is discussing a contentious debate over Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” authorial intent, background knowledge, or the source of readers’ interpretations, he writes with a methodical clarity of purpose that is all too often lacking in academic writing. It’s a shame that Blau’s book is more often than not preaching to the choir. The entire work could serve not only as a defense of literary study, but also as an cross-discipline example of writing and instruction at its best.

Sara

Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son” Actually About His Third Daughter

As I read through this week’s posts so far, I started to feel a bit like the odd woman out. I did NOT love Crosman’s article. For me, the most troubling aspect of this article was Crosman’s tone and obvious disdain for Hirsch’s perspective. Isn’t it odd that Crosman (so intent on pluralism) penned an article that is at times arrogant, “hipper than thou,” and decidedly firm in its own correctness? Is it just me, or could this article be subtitled “Why E.D. Hirsch is a Giant Fascist”?

Granted, I haven’t read Hirsch’s writings on the topic of interpretation and where meaning lies. And true, Crosman’s discussion of Hirsch’s terminology (for example, “verbal meaning vs. “significance”) reveals an overemphasis on semantics–though not necessarily the “contradiction” claimed by Crosman (151).

The specific section of Crosman’s analysis that most bothered me was his insistence that Hirsch’s perspective was the literary equivalent of Hobbes’s Leviathan. This analogy follows a short passage in which Hirsch comments on the development of modern approaches to interpretation:

When critics deliberately banished the original author, they themselves usurped his place, and this led unerringly to some of our present-day theoretical confusions. Where before there had been but one author, there now arose a multiplicity of them, each carrying as much authority as the next….If a theorist wants to save the idea of validity, he has to save the author as well. (Hirsch 5-6, quoted in Crosman 157).

Now, this passage strikes me as an entirely logical way to approach literature. Sure, Hirsch uses the language of politics—but is that not appropriate to a discussion of interpretive “authority”? More importantly, would any of us argue that the author isn’t an authority on what he or she intended?

Crosman takes Hirsch’s political language and runs with it. In Hirsch’s world, asserts Crosman, “meaning is either singular or absolute, or it does not exist (the author = the king)” (157). This statement is inflammatory not only because it misrepresents Hirsch’s comments, but also because it alludes to a political text that is commonly read as a justification for absolute, ruthless, dictatorial rule.

But Crosman does not stop there. He continues to portray Hirsch and his ilk as the old guard, wary of “ignorant” and “arrogant” usurpers of authority—and not just of the literary kind. According to Crosman, Hirsch longs for a world in which there is only ever one Truth, a world in which “decent [decent!!!] regard for hierarchy and order is maintained and the state is at peace” (158). As a writer concerned with words, meaning, and connotations, Crosman clearly knows what he’s doing here. He might as well have called Hirsch a “square.”

Despite Crosman’s insinuations and exaggerations, Hirsch’s perspectives on interpretation struck me as entirely appropriate and well-suited to most poetry written before the 20th century.

By Crosman’s own admission, “the convention that authors make meaning arose from a desire to think of truth as single and univocal” (161). For much of history, this was the main frame through which scholars in all fields perceived the world. Most poems were written with a specific plan, purpose, or with “philosophy” in mind. Would anyone honestly argue that there are multiple valid interpretations to a poem like Jonson’s “On My First Son” or Dryden’s “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”?

Despite what I’ve written above, I do not completely reject critical theories that locate meaning with the reader. I especially liked Crosman’s point that “authors make meaning…in the sense that we all do—as interpreters, as readers” (162). Likewise, the final stretch of Crosman’s argument against Hirsch (during which he drives home the point that “we make the author’s meaning!”) is very compelling.

In a larger, more philosophical sense, Crosman is also entirely correct that we live in an era in which few people except or believe in one singular truth or authority—in anything, never mind literature.

It makes sense, therefore to read most modern poetry with a pluralistic approach. I’d even venture to say that it should be applied (sparingly) to older texts. That being said, those who overuse such tactics run the risk of missing out on interesting and pertinent historical and biographical factors that can bring a deeper understanding to most texts.

Then again, maybe I’m just a square.

Sara