Wilhelm's assessment of New Criticism, the intentional and affective fallacies, etc. really got me thinking on how much I value each side of teaching any text: the author, the teacher and the student. While the author of a piece had certain intentions when they wrote it, one can argue that text has no meaning until it is read because the reader's experience from the text is what gives it meaning. I have to say I somewhat agree. There is usually an accepted idea of authorial intentions from any given piece, and while I think this should be highly regarded, I also believe the student's initial reaction to the text is of great value. While the context in which a work was written is important to associate with it, sometimes maybe it is better to just let a student read something and hear their uninterrupted reaction within a modern context. Therefore, the student's reactions comes first and authorial intention second while the teacher is there to mediate and give his/her own interpretations when necessary (if that makes sense!).
When I first started reading the case studies of Joanne, Cora and Ron, I noticed it was a sharp contrast to having just read about the author's eighth grade remedial reading class in the introduction and some of the students in the first chapter. But as a teacher I will teach students who will be into everything I teach, who will resist everything I teach or just struggle time after time, and everyone in between. I thought it was really interesting how Cora said she only watches TV when she is sick and doesn't feel like thinking. It reminded me of how I am always preaching that TV is a passive activity and reading is an actively engaging one. When the three students write metaphors for their perceptions of reading, I thought this would be a cool activity to do on the first day of class. It could be a nice little add-on to the standard first day introductions and you can still get a feel for your students in relation to the class. You could even keep them until the end of the year and see if the students' opinions have changed at all. Wilhelm really makes it an agenda to make readers out of students, or at least to help them see the value in reading, and I think such an accomplishment would be priceless.
In my senior year AP Lit class, our teacher had us define "literature" and "fiction" in two separate definitions. It was a cool assigment that really got us thinking - and I wish she had given us what we had written at the end of year (like you suggested). It would have been cool to see how we had grown.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that in terms of authorial intention that the intent of the author is that the reader finds meaning in their text? I forget which literary criticism this thought came from (although I want to say New Criticism...?), but the idea that the author infuses their work with meaning but once they release it to the public, the meaning can no longer be the author's but belongs to whoever chooses to read it. Basically what I am saying is do you think that even an author who has a specific meaning in their text, do you think that they allow for a reader's interpretation because of the fact that reading is such a personal experience and that once the reader engages in the text, the text immediately becomes bigger than what the author had written because it then also encompasses the reader's experiences and thoughts and dreams as well? So then, in any work can a work be limited to the author's meaning/intent alone?
Perhaps a clearer [and much more concise] question is: Does a text have meaning if no one reads it?
ReplyDeleteWe discussed this a lot in my Intro to Lit Studies II class (obviously because we were learning the theories!) and it reminds me of a story Dr. Bibby told us. Basically, at a literature conference of sorts a reader stood up and gave his opinion of a text and what it meant to him, the bigger concepts he got from it, etc. Turned out, the author was at the conference and subsequently stood up saying the reader was completely out of line and wrong about anything he had intended in his work. But was the author wrong? To an extent I would say, yes.
ReplyDeleteWhile in my opinion it is certainly important to consider the stance in which the author is writing from (and also the author's background and history), by publishing his/her work the author must realize that it does not really belong to him/her anymore. The reader has the freedom to interpret anything from the text; it's not like we need the author's consent to feel a certain way about it. However, I shouldn't go so far to say that text has no meaning unless someone reads it, because it has meaning to the author when he/she writes it.
It is true that you will be getting all different sorts of readers regardless of where you teach. We must be prepared. Students need to feel the enjoyment of reading, even though it isn't something passive like a TV show or a movie. They can feel enjoyment in the adventure. They can put themselves into the characters and live in a different world while sifting through pages of intriguing tales. I like your idea for an activity as well. If you do try it out. Let me know how it goes.
ReplyDeleteGood observations, Becky. I like what you said about technology and the classroom. I think it can only enhance the student's experiences. It seems to me the use of laptops would help students find art and visuals more easily to create collages or whatever project they might be doing connected to literature. The other thing I like is that it would make such projects more manageable from a time perspective. The hard part is staying ahead of all the technology. By the way, I heard the smartboard is coming to DHC 004. I hope it does, I'd like to see how one works!
ReplyDeleteI also really agree that meaning is made through a combination of authorial intention and the reader. I like your idea of having the students write at the beginning of the year, and then maybe reading it at the end. It seems like students would like that, and could really benefit from seeing how they have grown or changed over the course of a year.