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[fiona]

Invoking postmodernism for those of us who don't buy into that particular foolishness doesn't strengthen your case.

As I noted in my first post in this thread, my own research agenda places me squarely in the modernist camp. I find much postmodern/post-structural theory to be nihilistic and deeply troubling from a philosophical perspective. However, I would maintain that postmodernism has influenced research in the humanities and has blurred boundaries.

As for the rest of the discussion, I must admit that I'm not at all clear about the objective of the debate. What are we trying to prove here?

Good question. I think this thread started as a discussion of Edmundson's article, in which he felt that students should encounter and study literature themselves, rather than being assigned to interpret it through the eyes of critics (Butler on Austen). Then, among many diversions, the discussion seemed to break into two major subthreads, one being about what we teach or should teach, and the other about scholarly debates about disciplinarity and languages.

I'm more concerned with what we teach, and that we teach students by example and through discussion how to communicate ideas clearly. In fact, just getting them to discuss ideas can be a challenge and an opportunity. Getting them to read a text (such as a novel, play, or short story) thoroughly, and assigning them to marshal evidence supporting any opinion ("Romeo is a stalker") gets them to do an intellectual task, reading and thinking, that would benefit them for the rest of their lives.

That's my dog in this fight.

The Fiona

[juanb]

I'm more concerned with what we teach, and that we teach students by example and through discussion how to communicate ideas clearly. In fact, just getting them to discuss ideas can be a challenge and an opportunity. Getting them to read a text (such as a novel, play, or short story) thoroughly, and assigning them to marshal evidence supporting any opinion ("Romeo is a stalker") gets them to do an intellectual task, reading and thinking, that would benefit them for the rest of their lives.

That's my dog in this fight.

The Fiona

I think we're betting on the same dog.  I see literature classes as a vehicle for expanding students' communicative/expressive abilities.  And they can't become better, clearer communicators without at the same time becoming better, clearer thinkers.

But I can appreciate those (specialists) who just want to study literature as a phenomenon in the world. 

[nordicexpat]

OK, I probably overreacted, and thanks for the welcome to stay.  I get frustrated with forums because I obviously have trouble communicating to a general audience in this format.  (I’ve only just returned to forums after a very long hiatus).  But I do think it is important to promote understanding across disciplines, so I have mixed feelings about participating.

I still think Edmundsen's articule is about studying literature as a means of promoting what he calls "secular conversion."  He doesn't like what he calls "readings" because it interferes with that process.   We’ve been focusing on his critique but ignoring the central point, but so be it.

In response to Popsucket.  I am familiar with several fields to varying degrees:  literary studies, linguistics, cognitive sciences, and philosophy.  All these fields have the same “identity crisis” in that there are some who loudly proclaim that what others do are a sham (I'm exaggerating a bit, but some linguists see Chomsky as the Antichrist, others as the messiah, cognitive science is divided between those who see cognition as a form of symbol manipulation and those who see it more along the lines of a neural network, etc).  The history of science is not my field, but didn't Schrodinger think that the Copenhagen school was spouting nonsense?  Disciplines evolve at different paces, and my discipline is in a different stage of development and evolves at a different pace than the natural sciences. It's a growing pain, and, frankly, needs time to work itself out.  Yes, people outside the field have the right to criticize and wonder about its worth: but imagine what a chemist would say if the public said, “your field would be more relevant if you could transform base metal into gold.” It’s not a constructive critique, because it shows no understanding of the field in question.  That's how I feel when I read a lot of critiques by people outside the field. 

About the specific contribution I see literary studies making.  I am probably going to out myself very soon because there are few people doing the kind of research I am interested in, but so be it.  Let's take a basic question.  Why do people respond emotionally to works of art, or, in this case, to fictional/literary narratives?  On the face of it, it is irrational: fictional characters/people aren't real, and no sane person rushes on stage to stop Othello from killing Desdemona (note that I am not denying that people have emotional responses to said narratives, nor would I tell a student that his or her emotional response is irrational).  Philosophers have discussed this issue for ages, but they tend discuss what it means for a work of art to express emotion, rather than with HOW it does (which is fine, that's what philosophers do).  When cognitive scientists address the issue, they tend to operate at a level of generality that would apply to ANY emotional response.  Again, that is sufficient for cognitive scientists, but it doesn't answer the question about why some narratives tend to evoke emotional responses and others don't (and I need to add an awful lot of qualifications here, because I don't think it is the narratives per se that do this but the cognitive operations readers perform -- sorry about the jargon -- so we include those who respond emotionally to, say, romance novels but find Joyce boring and vice versa).  Linguists are beginning to address such questions, but, again, a lot of the work I have read does not sufficiently distinguish different kinds of texts (because they operate at a different level of generality) and tends not to neglect the "affective" dimension of metaphor/narrative, etc (this is a simplistic account of linguistics, I know. But it would take an article to explain what I mean).  So someone with an expertise in literature can say to (or, better, show) a philosopher, cognitive scientists or a linguist that the explanation they give isn't explicit enough to account for a "literary" example: it either lets too much in or keeps too much out.  And working with and learning from the expertise garnered from these different approaches, we try to increase our understanding not only of “literature” but also language and cognition more generally  (And I put literature in scare quotes because “narrative” is not even primarily linguistic in nature, but literary types have worked on this subject more than others). 

Does this mean that literary studies is simply a branch of linguistics or the cognitive sciences?   Well, I’ll risk an analogy to the sciences (like all analogies, it will contain inaccuracies).  I am sure at some general and abstract level, everything is governed by the laws of physics.  That doesn’t preclude studying chemistry or biology, because the “laws” of chemistry or biology operate on a different level of generality than those of physics.  It’s the same relationship among cognition, language, and literature: at one level, everything comes down to the brain, but in order to understand the details of cognition, we need to come down a level, in order to understand the details of language, we need to come down to yet another level, and to understand the details of so-called “literary language,” still another.   (And to simplify the discussion I have omitted the social/cultural realm, but we would need to take that dimension into account as well). Deciding the dividing line among these levels is tricky.  As I said, I don't know how much of so-called "literary" language can be explained by accounts of language provided by general linguistics, in the same way that I don't know how much of language use in general can be attributed to general cognitive abilties. These are questions for further research. Maybe in some time in the future, we will be able to go directly from the properties of neurons to the comprehension of metaphor.  But that’s a promise that is very far off. So we are still in the realm of conversation and colloboration rather than replacement.   

Now in order for that conversation to take place there has to be some commonality among the fields.  Neither a linguist nor a cognitive scientist is going to be terribly interested in the question as to whether Hamlet should have made up mind earlier to kill Claudius.  (Actually, I don’t see the point of that question).  And again, my own research is in my ways over the heads of undergraduates, so I don't teach it to them directly (I mention cognitive issues on the side, mostly I focus on language and literature -- and by language I do mean linguistics, and by linguistics I DO NOT mean Saussure).  I don't dispute the fact that students need to learn how to marshall evidence and communicate ideas clearly.  I just think all fields have the responsibility to teach this, and I am really not convinced that English departments are in a better position to do this than others (a lot of composition specialists want to be released from English departments, because they see the focus on literature as detrimental to that goal).  So I do want to give us some disciplinary specialization beyond the “promoting clear communication” or promoting “secular conversion” roles.  Teaching students about how language/literature operates and how to communicate effectively do not need to be mutually exclusive. (And I really do think English departments should promote the understanding of English independent of literature and I don't want them to be compartmentalized subjects).         

[popsucket]

<claps excitedly>

Great post, Nordicexpat.  Thanks for sticking around and clarifying your ideas.  The examples in that post make sense to me and I can see where not only is what you want to do is interesting, but why it would be valuable.  Now, can you convince others in your field to do things like that or is it doomed to the squishy postmodern "Nothing really means anything except when I say it does" garbage that gives academics a bad name?

To address Mountainguy's question, my dog in this fight comes from my seeing too much emphasis in lower level classes of waterboarding the text (love that term from upthread) instead of learning to read and think in ways that will be useful outside of literature studies classes.  I love to read.  I think more people should read for pleasure.  I think low level literature classes should encourage people to read and think about what they would do in those situations, what other cultures take as given, normal behavior, and make connections between how a difference in background and previous experience influences one's perceptions and actions in a given situation.  I want literature classes to help students become reflective about the world, their place in it, and how their limited experience is not the only valid lens through which to interpret the world.

Those views are why those of us not in English want students to take general ed classes.  We need an educated population who can think and reflect.  Getting carried away by insisting that general ed students be able to apply the Marxist/feminist/postmodernist/heterosexualist/Bignamist method detracts from that goal.  Pointing out that everyone has biases is good.  Having students be able to identify biases and assumptions in their reading and own thinking is valuable.  However, banging the drum that all writing stems from heterosexual desire (or whatever Nancy Armstrong's point was) just reinforces the idea that book learning and academics is a waste of time because it's so far removed from common sense.

Does that put us all in the same camp?

[mountainguy]

Does that put us all in the same camp?

Yes, I think it does. I particularly agree with these two points:

Those views are why those of us not in English want students to take general ed classes.  We need an educated population who can think and reflect.  Getting carried away by insisting that general ed students be able to apply the Marxist/feminist/postmodernist/heterosexualist/Bignamist method detracts from that goal.  Pointing out that everyone has biases is good.  Having students be able to identify biases and assumptions in their reading and own thinking is valuable.  However, banging the drum that all writing stems from heterosexual desire (or whatever Nancy Armstrong's point was) just reinforces the idea that book learning and academics is a waste of time because it's so far removed from common sense.

I'm more concerned with what we teach, and that we teach students by example and through discussion how to communicate ideas clearly. In fact, just getting them to discuss ideas can be a challenge and an opportunity. Getting them to read a text (such as a novel, play, or short story) thoroughly, and assigning them to marshal evidence supporting any opinion ("Romeo is a stalker") gets them to do an intellectual task, reading and thinking, that would benefit them for the rest of their lives.

These are also my goals when I teach, and I'm quite comfortable with seeing literature pushed in this direction.

Where I suspect we might depart ways (and I'm comfortable with that disjuncture) is whether literary theory has any place in the teaching of literature all. Certainly, I think we would all agree that it does more harm than good for undergraduates taking introductory lit. classes. But I do believe that introducing some theory to advanced undergraduate English majors can help them to make better sense of the social context of literature. However, that's an entirely different ball game.

[Also note that I'm not saying students have to uncritically accept every statement ever made by theorists like Armstrong. Clearly, there's a lot of ridiculous stuff out there. Foucaultian theory in particular drives me bonkers].

[popsucket]

Where I suspect we might depart ways (and I'm comfortable with that disjuncture) is whether literary theory has any place in the teaching of literature all. Certainly, I think we would all agree that it does more harm than good for undergraduates taking introductory lit. classes. But I do believe that introducing some theory to advanced undergraduate English majors can help them to make better sense of the social context of literature. However, that's an entirely different ball game.

I agree with this in a general sense.  I'm not in the field, but introducing some theory of the field in advanced undergrad classes makes sense to me.  I don't really care what people do at the graduate level as long as they keep in mind that their graduate students need to learn to teach the nontheory parts to students. 

Even some elements of postmodernism make sense to me.  Some meaning must be constructed by the reader.  Research on reading comprehension shows that people who are reading passages well outside their personal experiences have more trouble finding the main ideas and making inferences, even when they have the vocabulary and skills to read at the level of the text.  I accept that many things we think of as reality are social constructs and that some elements of doing science (e.g., what questions are deemed worthy of funding or even pursuing) are social questions, not science questions.  However, I'm with you on this:

[Also note that I'm not saying students have to uncritically accept every statement ever made by theorists like Armstrong. Clearly, there's a lot of ridiculous stuff out there. Foucaultian theory in particular drives me bonkers].

[juanb]

There's bound to be a disconnect between the goals and methodologies for research in the humanities and the goals for teaching general education humanities courses to the masses.

Literature for the masses must necessarily have different goals from literature studies for literature specialists. 

[aristof_ns]

If we encourage students to read literature for its life-changing, perspective-skewing, transformative potential--if we regard it as a record of the best that has been known and thought--then where's the place for "recovered" (read bad) literature that lacks transformative potential?  We have to perform "readings" to cover that fact that much of the "literature" we teach is not worth reading.

I haven't seen this comment fully followed up on, but it's key in many ways to literary historians of minority literature, who often focus on recovering early authors and texts, many of which got lost over time for various reasons (some aesthetic, some political, some cultural). But in terms of literary history, the aesthetic (or 'transformative') power of a text is less important than how the text reveals its context and how it helps us understand the artistry of later, "better" texts. (This has also been an important practice in such fields as Medieval studies and Early American studies, in which scholars are dealing with a high percentage of "pre-Masterpiece" literature.)

But I don't think you need readings to cover this problem. You simply need to explain that you're dealing with literary historical questions related to the origins and development of literary traditions. And the historical question is interesting and useful in its own right, regrdless of the aesthetic quality of the texts. It also provides an opportunity to examine how different cultures have different aesthetic values, so as to call into question the assumption that the texts under consideration are in fact "bad" literature and to suggest that perhaps they simply represent different notions of what literature is and does.