If I were a member of a department that was thinking along these lines, what would happen to messy texts? Would they go under some kind of pedagogical "black-list"? Well, the truth is that messy texts like Finnegan's Wake and Pound's Cantos are almost never taught, for the much more practical reason that students (and most techers, including myself) can't make heads or tails of them. If you wanted to question the meaning of "blood" - as a metaphor for family, as a metaphor for race - you could just as easily do it with social examples, such as interracial marriage, or cross-racial adoption.Īnd I am worried about the implications of requiring that literary texts be taught for their usefulness. My point about teaching Ulysses, for instance, for its 'lessons' rather than for Joyce's virtuosic display of literary prowess, is highly arguable (though Dan doesn't criticize me specifically on that claim). To begin with, I may as well acknowledge that some of my speculations (especially on taking a "soft utilitarian" approach) might be a little shaky. There is no overly compelling reason to teach literature in University classrooms, so why not just take it out entirely?" Other, non-literary, texts might provide the same lessons as effectively. His general argument might be paraphrased as "Even teaching literature for its educative value - lessons for life - is insufficient. The primary issue I was working on in that long post was whether and how teachers of literature might honestly represent what they do to the broader world, when the broader world doesn't think much of it, and takes any opportunity it can to say so.ĭan makes some points that are tough for me to immediately refute. Why teach literature? Part 2: The Reading Experience Respondsĭan Green, of The Reading Experience, has written a substantial response to my "Why Do We Teach Literature?" post from last week. MP3 Blogs and Podcasts Akwaaba Sound System Preface, World Religions and Media Culture (2000) Partha Chatterjee's 'A Princely Imposter?' Amardeep Singh, Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University.Īmitava Kumar, South Asian Literary Criticism
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