On Literature and Teaching

'I don't want to think when I read!' The historically dominant view of literature over more than a hundred years has been academic , intellectual and moral . Academic , because universities have dominated the landscape for a while, creating Literature Departments, Literature Degrees, Literature Professors and Literature Lists. That, in turn, has canonized some texts and relegated others to a Below-Par, Academically-Unworthy purgatory. And that , in turn, has ostracised plenty of writers and readers. Intellectual , because academic studies immediately imply intellectualizing, developing the tools of the trade, creating a specific jargon, categorizing, labelling, sub-grouping. And that , unsurprisingly, has ostracised many, many readers and authors. Moral , because the written word, for millennia, has been associated with the ability to read it, write it, use it, and that little by little, the idea that Literary texts are superior has morphed into the idea that R...

  Transposed to the classroom, the discussion above (in Part 1) has two very clear consequences: First , assuming that most pupils (or students, or even people at large) read little fiction – something national studies consistently show – it will mean that the texts you give them are likely to be the first token of that type. In other words, the first example of a genre, style, narrative approach and all the rest of it. All those elements you take from granted when you know the genre will become distractions, obstacles for the others. What seems evident to you is for them a nuance they cannot yet perceive; what stands out as possibly symbolic to you remains prosaically what it is for them. A stone is for you mineral so it could symbolise death, or it symbolises the past, or solidity, or an opposition to the lichen on top; for them it’s just, well, a stone. With some lichen on top, which they’re likely to have ignored (details, Watson, details!). And let’s not forget: those el...

  On beauty, taste, and ‘hearing the performance’ (Part 1)  The philosopher of music Peter Kivy establishes a useful distinction which, although originally applied to classical music, can serve equally well to contextualise the discussion that follows. It is possible, Kivy argues (2007), when listening to classical music, to hear the music but not the performance. What he means is that any given musical score is both played and interpreted: played , because the notes are there, along with most dynamics (e.g. loud vs soft, crescendo, accents, tempo), and any instrumentalist will play what is written. Interpreted , because there is space enough for a musician to give their own twist to those notes and indications – taking a passage more slowly than indicated, playing legato instead of staccato, accentuating this note rather than that one, and of course changing the tempo.  So in the words of Kivy, a performance is a token (a sort of example) of the music-type, a...