Purpose of this blog: Reviews of interesting research in English education journals. When possible, I suggest how I might apply the findings to my own classroom.
10-second review: Suggests that in addition to the usual approach to writing literary history, the record of readers’ responses to literature, from generation to generation, be included.
Title: “Readers Responding—And Then?” Gunner Hanson. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1992), 135-148.
Why should readers’ responses be included in literary history?
Quote: “And this production of meanings takes place at two different points—at the writing of the texts, and at the reading of the texts. The latter points, the reading of literature, is in reality a series of points, since new meanings and values are produced by new generations and groups of readers for as long as the texts survive and are used by readers.”
How is literary history traditionally written?
Quote: “As we all know, traditional literary history—research as well as the writing of handbooks—has concentrated almost completely on the writing of literature: on the authors, their lives and problems, their education and reading, influences on and from them, the schools and movements to which they belong, and so on. When properly done, this is sound and solid history, derived from documents and other reliable data. There is no need to question that kind of history—it has been and will always be of vital interest as the grounding of literature. But where is the other side—the reader’s side?”
What questions might be answered in a reader’s history of literature?
Quote: “What do we know—or what could we know—about the distribution of, say, the novels of Upton Sinclair or Jack London? Who were the people who bought, borrowed, and read their books? And what significance and value did they find in the books? How were their ways of thinking and their views of life influenced by their reading of the books?”
How do different groups of people respond differently to literature?
Quote: “If a cross section is made through a population at a particular time, we shall in most cases find different groups, different communities, giving more or less different meanings to the texts.”
Of course literary critics, informed readers of literature, provide most people’s interpretations of literature. How do ordinary readers of literature respond sometimes to the critics’ view of literature? “…it would put the students in situations where they either have to protest or argue against the analysis, or have to accept the analyst’s statements—saying for instance: OK, this was said or written by an expert; I cannot see what he saw in the text, but that’s because I am a bit stupid and a bad reader of poetry.”
Comment: An interesting new dimension to the history of literature. Of course there would be problems in collecting and selecting the responses of individuals and groups. Interesting. RayS.
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