In Deeper Reading Gallagher points out the merit of tying a text to personal experience. Framing the text for students does more than make literature relatable; in Gallagher's words, "Literature enables students to experience a safe 'practice run' through the great issues confronting us, and having students reflect on their reading by connecting it to a contemporary point of view is essential" (20). Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reader response (as outlined in Appleman 2009) fills out Gallagher's assertion by emphasizing an interplay between the reader and the text. It is both the text and the individual who contribute to the meaning that is discovered.
While I am aware of the fact of this event when I read, I am rarely conscious either of my contribution to the text or of a "practice run" through anything in particular. So, reminded of these concepts by today's reading, I decided to take a second look at my bookshelf. Leafing through the pages of particularly meaningful, even life-altering books failed to produce any epiphanies. I put an anthology back on the shelf and sat back for a broader view. At once, as a series of impressions came Odysseus, Achilles, Oroonoko, and Lady Macbeth; King Lear, Marlow, Milton's Satan, all the Karamazovs; Othello, Lord Jim, The Underground Man, and J. Alfred Prufrock: a crowd diverse as any. Yet in each I found something relatable, whether negative or positive– maybe something I brought, maybe something they brought too. As a young man coming of age, these are the characters, the stories, the texts that have provided me with a dry run through what it means to be a man. Through these characters I have confronted and participated in death, sin, forgiveness, love, strength, weakness, and humility. There is no one to one correlation between experience and the text, but I at least cannot deny their mingling as I search out what it means to live according to wisdom, as the man God created me to be.
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| Henry Fuseli - Tiresias appears to Ulysses |
". . .The blow smashed
the nape cord, and his ghost fled to the dark.
But I was outside, walking with the rest,
saying:
'Homeward you think we must be sailing
to our own land; no, elsewhere is the voyage
Kirkê has laid upon me. We must go
to the cold homes of Death and pale Perséphonê
to hear Teirêsias tell of time to come.'"
-Odysseus, The Odyssey, transalted by Robert Fitzgerald
"It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives." --Francis Bacon
ReplyDeleteI feel the above quote adequately explains the role confirmation bias plays in our lives, especially in the books we choose to read.
While I agree with you and Gallagher that it is important to make literature relatable to our own experience, I also believe that literature should challenge our world view and open our minds to other ways of thinking and knowing. I could not help but notice that all of the books that you have mentioned are all written by European White Males, except for Oroonoko which was written by Aphra Behn. This caused me to review my own bookshelf and I noticed that my books are mostly written by White Females of mostly European descent. Therefore, I, too, am reading books that confirm the biases I hold. This only serves to emphasize the need to move beyond reader response and apply critical theory to the what we read. Paraphrasing Smith, Appleman states: "Our pedagogy of personal response limits students' ability to derive meaning out of texts that describe worlds and experiences far different from our own, a reason, again ironically, why many of us began to love literature in the first place" (pg.44).
Thanks for calling me on that one, Rhonda.
ReplyDeleteThough the authors are to a degree homogenous (at least Western in some form if not white males), I had meant to show how this group DID represent worlds and experiences far different from my own. I am disappointed that my writing fell flat on this point. What made many of these characters valuable for reader response was their (and in a few cases their authors') difference.
At the same time, it would certainly be beneficial for me to stick my nose in a few more books from outside the Western canon.