TWO CONTRASTING APPROACHES TO TEACHING LITERATURE

The aim of this essay is to illustrate the concept of reader-response criticism as presented by Stanley Fish in Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics. I shall define the main ideas that this type of interpretation has brought to literary criticism, point out the essential oppositions to new criticism and try to display its strong points as well as its weak points.

Twenty first century is regarded as the age of globalization, transnationalism and telecommunication. Education today is focused to prepare people to be flexible, multi-skilled, dynamic problem solvers, and creative explorer of resources with the ability to interpret reality from multiple perspectives and bring harmony between knowledge and creativity. Therefore, the traditional approaches to teaching literature have been replaced with modern approaches. The modern approaches were introduced at the turn of twentieth century. Initial efforts were made by Formalists and the New Critics who assigning primary importance to the text set up the tradition of close reading. This structuralist approach was replaced by post-structural approaches in the second half of the twentieth century which brought the reader to spotlight and supported him/her to hold the centre stage. Today Reader Response, Deconstruction and other deconstructive reader-based interpretative theories such as New Historicism, Post-Structuralist Marxism, Cognitive Poetics, Feminism, Postcolonialism and Postmodernism are considered major interpretive methods. The present paper evaluates both traditional approaches and poststructuralist literary theoretical approaches to the teaching and interpretation of literary texts in the light of research on twenty-first century education and teaching literature. The paper through this evaluation attempts to explore how poststructuralist critical theories for literary analysis support the pedagogies which are recommended for the effective and dynamic twenty-first century classrooms. The paper concludes that reader-based poststructuralist methods of analysis train students to make efforts to bring change into their cognitive structures and see the world from multiple perspectives. Students are enabled to pose challenge to conventions, reject assumptions and established meanings and work out alternate solutions.

Many literary critics have also asked the question, “Does meaning reside in the author, the text, or the reader” (Richter, 2000, p.12) and what is the nature of literary experience (Langer, 1995, p. 24). As literary critics continue their litanies of pedagogical problems and critiques associated with the author, the text, and the reader (inherent in New Criticism and the flaws in New Critical practices) nowhere is the impact felt more than on the reader just because when two elephants are fighting, it is the grass that suffers.

critics, 2015

Cuadernos De Filologia Inglesa, 1986

This article grows out of three of my research interests: the philosophical bases of aestheticlliterary response, a developmental approach to the pedagogical treatment of student response to literature, and the critical theory of Northrop Frye, in whose work the concepts and some of my terminology originates '. What follows is a seque1 to two papers already published and one in press. al1 dealing with the attempt to analyze and systematize kinds and levels of literary response '. The critical and educational climate which surrounds this study addresses the increasing attention paid to the role of the reader in instantiating the literary text, and to language as the key to cognitive and emotional development '. Often theories which become ,<movements» run the risk of imbalance and the creation of false dichotomies, with the result that perfectly valid aspects of doctrines which have gone before become obfuscated and trivial-I For a discussion of the bases of these categories of response, see

Orbis Litterarum, 1979

Some critics see the recent interest in readers and reading as a threat not only to authorship but to the very notion of text. This paper contends that no such threat exists since contemporary concepts of the reader are rather the result of a displacement which works to extend the privileges of literariness and authorship.

2017

Diversity of opinion is a positive human conduct standing for man’s mental progress and his civilisation growth. It is one of the aspects of multiplicity and cultural wealth. It is a human right that helps to tackle the world’s unipolarity, as well as to give way to several visions and readings. It also aims at encouraging free opinions and releasing creative initiatives in different domains. Diversity is the recognition of the other and the acceptance of plurality. Reading is the manifestation of human communication, which, in fact, is a sort of dialogue between the self and the other. The efficiency can only be achieved through highly creative texts which challenge time and reading patterns because of their various and deep meanings. Works that generate eagerness, fear and pleasure thanks to the creative potentials, a concise structure and the use of a multifunctional language. In fact, it is this array of meaning that transforms the process of reading into an adventure full of probability, diversity and constructive divergence. This article is to focus on the need to learn the art of criticism in order to widen the learner’s knowledge on artistic works.

2007

This paper challenges the assumptions underlying two major principles for selecting and teaching literatuie.at the senior level: the social relevance of its subject matter and its immediate impact on students. Both these criteria espouse a Platonic view of criticism, which regards literature and literary response in terms of its rhetor:cal effects rather than its aesthetic structure. Through the example of Boles A Man for All Seasons and Hemingway&#39;s &quot;The Killers,&quot; we are shown how content and feeling approaches to literature can misconstrue literary meaning, affect the role of the teacher, and influence educational policy. An alternative approach is suggested, which argues for the critical response and the perception of literary form as the basis for literary experience and curriculum design.

This talk explores some possible uses of affect in the teaching of literature.