Rosenblatt Chapter 6

In the space of a few pages in chapter six, Rosenblatt has touched on so many themes I've been working through over the past few semesters. Chapter 6 starts with some observations about how much the world has changed, which seem dated. Eventually, she comes to a discussion of science and the artificial divide between literature/the humanites and science. She's on the other side of the wall from Krulwich. He says science is poorer without story. She says the study of literature is poorer without science, and that science has gotten a bum rap about being necessarily dry and unfeeling. She criticizes the adoption of physics as a model for social sciences. She criticizes an over-reliance on behaviorism.

She also talks about art and the role of the artist in communication.

She also talks about the inescapable subjectivity of research and the need for researchers to interrogate their own cultural biases and agendas.

Brief Notes on Rosenblatt Sections 1 & 2

Section 1: The Province of Literature

Chapter 1: The Challenge of Literature

Literature should be viewed as a living context, without limitations of any particular lens. "...the teaching of literature necessarily involves helping the student handle social, psychological, and ethical concepts"

Chapter 2: The Literary Experience

Reading is transactional. Understanding does not exist on the page or in the head, but in the space between. While understanding the author, the literary movement, the time period, etc., are important, it's ultimately about a transaction between the author and the reader. The reader has to have sufficient life experience to understand what the author is trying to communicate.

Section 2: The Human Basis of Literary Sensitivity

Chapter 3: The Setting for Spontaneity

The relationship between the teacher and students that allows productive interchange with literature.

Chapter 4: What the Student Brings to Literature

Preoccupations and needs the adolescent brings to literature.

Chapter 5: Broadening the Framework

Clarifying the student's response to literature; the kinds of knowledge that will contribute to understanding.

More Rosenblatt

More Rosenblatt:

"Recognition that there can be no absolute, single 'correct' version of a text has sometimes been seen as accepting any reading of a text. Without positing a single, absolutely correct reading, we can still agree on criteria by which to evaluate the validity of alternative interpretations of a text." p. xix

This relates strongly to the discussions we've had in our research group when viewing the movies from camp. We use communitarian grounded theory, a process by which we generate alternative interpretations and interrogate each other. We eventually express a multiplicity of possible meanings. The ones that gain no traction in the group are discarded.

Still, in many discussions, it has felt like we are trying to identify the 'right' answer. I'm very interested in how Rosenblatt defines evaluation criteria for alternative interpretations.

Rosenblatt 1995

Rosenblatt, L. (1995). Literature as Exploration (5th Edition). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America.

Barry, P. (2002). Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

In the foreword to the fifth edition, Wayne Booth hopes that someone will apply Rosenblatt's work to TV and video.

"In other words, the students we meet in classrooms today need something more than education in conducting transactions with books. To survive as the kind of people Rosenblatt would have us become, they need what seems to be the much more difficult art (though new technologies are making it possible): slowing down the image, recognizing that living with the flow of images and talking back to them is, as Rosenblatt says of reading literature, a "mode of living" (264), a training for the life that occurs after the images are turned off."

When he wrote this in 1995, the kind of response he was talking about was less possible than it is now. With desktop video and online video publishing, it becomes possible for a wide range of people to "slow down" the moving image, dissect it, and respond in the same mode. The moving images that both reflect and help to shape our culture are now infinitely re-viewable - through DVD, online video, and particularly through online video sharing sites like YouTube. If I want to more closely examine a political speech, or a popular movie, or a video composed by an anonymous person (commonplace since online video sharing, almost unheard of before that), I can access the original (video) text, slow it down, pause it, segment it, re-present it in new contexts, and juxtapose it with other (video) texts to produce my response in the same mode as the original. Online video sharing means that the potential audience for my response may be as great as that of the original text, depending in large part on the quality of my work.

I just began reading Barry's Beginning Theory, which interestingly omits any reference to Louise Rosenblatt and reader response theory. Barry says he's providing a survey of all major developments in literary theory, at least over the past 100 years. According to Wayne Booth, "she has probably influenced more teachers in their ways of dealing with literature than any other critic". Literature as Exploration, originally published in 1938 and revised constantly since then, includes responses to all of the major literary theories that Barry lists. Why isn't Rosenblatt included, even as a footnote, in Barry's book? Why not even a word to say why he doesn't value her work?

In Barry's book, I've just finished the section on liberal humanism. This describes the state of English studies before critical theory. Liberal humanism argues against bringing preconceived notions into the analysis of literature. It says that a book should be evaluated based solely on a close reading of the text on the page, not through any lens of theory. It presupposes the existence of an essential human nature, absolute truth, and timeless great works of literature. It is criticized for unexamined Eurocentric and androcentric underlying assumptions that marginalize others by elevating European male perspectives to the status of essential truths. It also ignores the context that produces and influences a work of literature. From this perspective, the teacher (or critic) must help the student discover the essential truths in the text. There is only one correct answer and one correct response to a given piece of literature.