Re-Opening Close Reading
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RE-OPENING CLOSE READING: LITERATURE EDUCATION AND LITERARY EXPERIENCE by Andrew Rejan Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Andrew Rejan All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Re-opening Close Reading: Literature Education and Literary Experience This dissertation is a performance of, meditation on, and inquiry into the practice of close reading as it relates to the teaching, learning, and interpretation of literature. The objects of close reading include literature, the history of literary pedagogy and its relationship to critical theory, and a narrative that recounts my experience as an instructor of a teacher education course centered on literature and literary pedagogy. The seven chapters form a series of interlocking interpretive essays or “readings” that together raise questions about the relationship between aesthetic experiences with literary texts, the practice of literary interpretation, and pedagogical approaches in the literature classroom. The study is framed by an exploration of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, both of which, I argue, dramatize interpretive acts in ways that tacitly cue reading practices that would become familiar in twentieth-century literary and pedagogical theory. These two texts, the latter of which can be viewed as a “reading” of the former, provide a useful framework for conceptualizing literary knowledge as a kind of experiential knowledge, dramatizing Baconian empiricism and Coleridgean imagination in anticipation of twentieth- century theories of participatory aesthetics associated with I.A. Richards, John Dewey, and Louise Rosenblatt. Paradise Lost and Frankenstein also provide a testing ground for my own practice of close reading. At the heart of this study is a re-reading of the work of Rosenblatt and some of the New Critics: I argue that Rosenblatt and the New Critics, particularly Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, were pioneers of parallel, rather than opposing, pedagogical traditions, informed by the shared influence of Richards and Dewey. I decouple a vision for an authentic practice of close reading—grounded in aesthetic experience and supported by meaningful interpretive discourse—from the narrower version of close reading promoted by the Common Core State Standards in literacy, which have been widely critiqued in ways that invite reductive accounts of literary history. Through a return to Rosenblatt and the New Critics, alongside a discussion of contemporary debates about the place of close reading in the literature classroom, I articulate principles of practice that could unite secondary and college teachers of literature and inform the teaching and learning of close reading in the twenty-first century. I conclude with a narrative in which I attempt to enact some of these principles in a literature course for teachers, offering a close reading of the tensions and discoveries that emerge in my own teaching. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iii 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 2. EXPERIMENTAL READING: EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE IN PARADISE LOST ................................................. 16 “True Wisdom” in the Prose of Bacon and Milton ................................................................... 17 Milton’s Eve and the Distinction Between True and False “Experience” ................................ 20 Milton’s Baconian (and Deweyan) Model of Experiential Learning ........................................ 24 Milton’s Experimental Hermeneutics ....................................................................................... 29 3. AUTHORITY AND RESISTANCE: A HISTORY OF LITERATURE EDUCATION ..................................................................... 36 Pedagogical Authority and the Authorization of Literature as an Academic Subject .............. 37 What Questions Can a Literature Teacher Ask? ....................................................................... 46 Arguments for the Educational Value of Literature .................................................................. 51 Possibilities for Reform in the Teaching and Learning of Literature ....................................... 54 4. RECONCILING ROSENBLATT AND THE NEW CRITICS: THE QUEST FOR AN EXPERIENCED UNDERSTANDING OF LITERATURE ............................... 58 Revisiting a Problematic History .............................................................................................. 59 Mapping Shared Influence: A Return to Richards .................................................................... 67 A Close Reading of Close Readers: Parallels Between Brooks and Rosenblatt ....................... 71 Reclaiming Education as Experience: A Look at Deweyan Language ..................................... 79 Addressing the Problem of Authoritative Readings .................................................................. 84 Interpreting the Misinterpretation: The Debasement of New Criticism ................................... 87 Looking Forward (Closely): Implications for Teacher Education ............................................ 92 5. THE AESTHETICS AND ETHICS OF ATTENTION: CLOSE READING IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ................................................. 96 Close Reading in the University: Resistance and Re-commitment ........................................... 97 i The Anesthetizing Effect of the Common Core’s Version of “Close Reading” ..................... 107 Disentangling New Criticism, Close Reading, and the Common Core Standards ................. 112 Graff’s Reading for Argument and the Common Core’s Anti-New Critical Underpinnings . 119 Close Reading for the Twentieth Century ............................................................................... 125 6. CREATURE AS READER: LITERARY EDUCATION AND COLERIDGEAN IMAGINATION IN FRANKENSTEIN .................................................................................. 132 Frankenstein’s Human Readers and the Creature’s Humane Readings ................................. 135 Shelley’s Reading Lesson: Evaluating Exemplary Reading and Misreading ......................... 139 Coleridgean Imagination as a Model for Reading .................................................................. 145 The Reading Public and the Reading Community .................................................................. 153 Teaching Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s Teachings ........................................................... 156 7. FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE: PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES IN A COURSE ON “CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE” ....................................................... 160 Diving into the Foxhole ........................................................................................................... 161 A Tremor in the Foundation .................................................................................................... 164 A New Direction ..................................................................................................................... 168 Jed’s Journey ........................................................................................................................... 174 Coda: Re-writing the Scripts ................................................................................................... 178 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................................ 185 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the five members of my dissertation committee—Sheridan Blau, Ruth Vinz, David Hansen, Michael Smith, and Leslie Brisman—for their time and insight. Sheridan Blau, the sponsor of this dissertation, has opened up worlds to me that words can hardly capture, as he has seen possibilities in me that I didn’t recognize myself and guided me toward countless opportunities to grow. His lifelong commitment to curiosity, intellectual humility, and the purest form of teaching and learning—the kind that Sheridan might argue is rarely ever found in schools—make him a powerful role model. I will always owe a debt of gratitude for his generosity. Throughout the past decade, in many courses and conversations, Ruth Vinz has been a frequent source of intellectual sustenance. I think of Ruth, standing beside a projection of shadow puppets, accompanied by a violin, as she tells the story of her dream about living a life with literature in it, and I feel inspired to pursue my own teaching dreams and to attempt, as Ruth does, to embody my ideals. I first encountered David Hansen when I was a master’s student at TC and he led an illuminating workshop on philosophical approaches to the teaching of literature; more recently, I appreciated the graceful wisdom of his lecture on the call to teach. I am honored to have his philosophical voice on the committee of a dissertation in which the work of John Dewey is a recurring thread. I began a correspondence with Michael Smith several years ago, when I was working on an article about Louise Rosenblatt and the New Critics that would eventually appear in English Education and would lead me toward the writing of this dissertation. His challenging and iii attentive feedback on mutliple