Language and Literature: A symbiotic relationship Teaching language throughliterature: Problems and Principles (Part 4) [Archives:2003/646/Education]
Dr. Damodar Thakur
Professor and Chairman
Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Sana'a
Summary of Part 3
As far as the current practice of teaching literature is concerned, most students tend to escape from the text and make extrinsic , biographical information about the author a substitute for an intensive reading of the text. Consequently they manage to acquire knowledge about literature and not knowledge of literature. A more pragmatic and profitable approach would be to lead them to 'experience' literature and then to explain or otherwise account for the literary experience. In all fairness, they should first study the text and then fit the text under an appropriate critical concept. True literature teaching should aim at promoting language abilities and not at enhancing content knowledge.
The Current Practice of Teaching Literature
3. Another feature of these literature courses is that they are often teacher-centered instead of being student-centered. When discussing the text in the class, the teacher supplies ready-made opinions about the plot, the characters and the like; the student makes a note of the teacher's opinions unquestionably, memorizes the teacher's evaluative remarks about the text and vomits them out in the examination in an undigested and often in an incoherent form. The students who get good grades are usually those who are good at making a note of what the teacher said in the class and reproducing them accurately in the examination. In some cases, the opinions that the teacher expresses in the class are not his; he only collects them from histories of literature, books of criticism and even bazaar notes. Someone once jocularly defined notes as things which pass from the notebook of a teacher to the notebook of a student without passing through the mind of either. This witty and jocular statement may sound to be an obsessively aggressive generalization and an unjustifiably harsh criticism of the way things are; but it does draw our attention to what is essentially true in the case of many teachers in the third world. The point that needs to be emphasized here is that instead of encouraging students to form their own opinions on the basis of an in-depth reading of the text, the teacher makes them dependent on him for comments on the text. The result is that teaching becomes transmissive in its orientation and fails in the expected task of stimulating the students to go and read more widely and intensively and then to form their own judgments. In their review of the current practice of literature teaching, Carter and Long (1991:4) say that literature teaching being the way it is in most cases, for evaluating a literary text, students mistakenly “rely on authorities outside themselves.” My assessment of the situation is that in the large majority of cases, this outside authority is unfortunately only the teacher teaching the course.
4. Both linguists and literary scholars seem to be in agreement about the importance of language in literature. Coleridge, for example, defined prose as words in their best order and poetry as the best words in the best order, the focus of the two definitions being on words, i.e., on the use of language. By way of defining literature, Ezra Pound (1931) also said “Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”3 David Lodge (1966:ix) made a similar remark about the importance of language in fiction and observed, “The novelists' medium is language: whatever he does qua novelist, he does in and through language.” But in actual practice, literature is generally taught solely for its content, with little attention to the use of language in the literary text being taught. The learner's linguistic ability at the end of the course is, therefore, no better than what it was at the beginning. By the end of the course, students acquire some superficial knowledge of the ideational content of literature, no doubt, but this knowledge of literature only disguises their poor attainments in language “the maxi-coat of literature hiding the mini-skirt of language.”
Looking ahead
Thinking creatively about the future, I would like to share with you my understanding of a fairy tale meant for children. The story begins with the mention of a fairy taking the child with her to a land of previously unknown charm and beauty. On the way the child puts the following three questions to the fairy.
(i) Where am I going?
(ii) How shall I get there?
(iii) How shall I know that I have arrived?
We need to have a clear answer to these three questions if we want our courses in literature to be meaningful.
Where are we going?
The first of these three questions asks for the clarity of objectives. Why do we teach English literature in the third world, in Yemen, India and Africa, for example? In my view, the two aims of teaching English literature in the third world should be (i) to strengthen the learner's feel for the language and ultimately to enable him to use it with force and effectiveness and (ii) to enrich and energize his inner sense of being. The first of these two aims has been discussed in some detail earlier, but the second one needs to be elaborated. During the last few centuries, the English-speaking world has attained greater intellectual heights than the others. These intellectual attainments have manifested themselves not only in philosophy and in scientific fields like astrophysics, space technology, information technology and genetic engineering but also in the daring emotive, imaginative and experiential adventures of the human psyche in poetry, drama and fiction. In my view, the English speaking world has explored greater territories of the ideational and attitudinal universe during the last few centuries than the rest of the world. These explorations include not only the literary achievements of authors like Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shaw, Eliot, Beckett, Frost and Hemingway but also authors from the outer circle, i.e. authors like Tagore, Chinua Achebe and Naipaul. Shelley described poetry as “the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.” It would be an act of over-simplification to say that poetry is always a record of the “happiest” moments of our life. It may well be a record of what Shelley himself described elsewhere as “saddest thought.”4 But nobody would ever disagree that when reading the great works of literature in English we come in contact with some of the best and most perceptive minds in human history. When we read their writings, we feel ideationally elevated, emotively and imaginatively augmented and experientially enriched. To keep ourselves away from their writings would mean retreating into a world of isolation. It would mean keeping ourselves away from the opportunity of enriching our inner being and feeling elevated thereby. As Northrop Frye (1964:129) once said, the ultimate aim of literature is not “simply the admiration of literature; it's something more like the transfer of imaginative energy from literature to the students.”
It may be pointed out here, however, that the imaginative energy in the use of one's language can seldom be achieved by a clever and yet barren and sterile use of rhetorical devices. Enduring vitality in the use of one's language can only come out of strong emotions, strongly experienced ideas. A person who is emotionally deaf, imaginatively blind and experientially imbecile can never acquire the magic in the use of words characteristic of great writers and speakers. Wordsworth's well-known description of poetry as an overflow of powerful feelings is in a way a true description of all powerful acts of communication. Our ideas and experiences have to be powerful enough to flow into powerful words. An intensive reading of literature not only adds vigor to one's communicative ability; it also fertilizes the ground which leads to a fragrant flowering of that ability. These two aims of reading literature mentioned above are, therefore, not two separate and unrelated aims.
To be concluded next week
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