Star Gazing

“It is literature and not literary criticism, which is the subject.” (Bridging English p 152)

I appreciate this quote because to me, it indicates that we should remember to keep the focus on the literature itself without getting too far wrapped up in the literary theory about it. We should allow students to evaluate it for themselves first before flooding their minds with the deconstructionist views they will never be able to erase after learning and possibly, sadly, never be able to appreciate literature on their own terms again. I’m reminded of that beautiful Whitman poem, When I Heard the Learned Astronomer:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Of course we can guide them by giving them basic information about the different lenses they can look through to evaluate literature, such as psychological, feminist, biographical, Marxist, mythological, formalist, post modernist, etc, but I would hate for theory to get in the way of students experiencing the beauty of literature for themselves first.

Reader-response criticism is the one I lean most towards because I think it’s the one that makes most sense – what experiences do readers bring to the text initially that lead them to understand the material in their unique ways? Maybe I feel strongest about this type of literary criticism because my background is in personal essay writing/creative nonfiction and almost everything for me takes on meaning by how well I can relate to it.

What concerns me about literary theory is that despite all my years of education and being an educator myself, I never felt adequate enough to participate in that type of dialogue. I consider it to be too stuffy and high-brow for me. I’m like the Charles Bukowski of literary theory – I prefer the dirty every-day man lingo to the “look at me I have a top notch university education” speech that nauseates me whenever I hear it. Sure there is pleasure in speaking intelligently but I prefer speaking as I understand things and maybe it’s because it takes me a lot longer to process complex ideas that I prefer simplicity and clarity. Perhaps this has something to do with my background as an immigrant child and ESL student, never feeling fully adequate to participate in such conversations. I can certainly do it but I just prefer not to. I’d like to be able to teach the basics of theory/criticism and let students do what they will with it because on my radar it isn’t as important as the literature itself.