Contributions of John Dewey and Louise M
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THE EMERGING PARADIGM OF READER-TEXT TRANSACTION: CONTRIBUTIONS OF JOHN DEWEY AND LOUISE M. ROSENBLATT, WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATORS by Elizabeth H. Roth Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction Jim Garrison, Chair Patricia P. Kelly Jan Nespor Warren P. Self Robert C. Small, Jr. December 4, 1998 Blacksburg, Virginia Key words: philosophy of education, teaching of literature, literary theory, John Dewey, Louise M. Rosenblatt The Emerging Paradigm of Reader-Text Transaction: Contributions of John Dewey and Louise M. Rosenblatt, With Implications for Educators Elizabeth H. Roth (ABSTRACT) This dissertation will trace the emerging paradigm of transaction as a model for the dynamics of the reading process. The paradigm of transaction, implicit in John Dewey's writings as early as 1896 in "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," was originally described in terms of "interaction" between organism and environment. Only in 1949, in the twilight of his career, did Dewey definitively distinguish between "transaction" and "interaction," ascribing a mutually transformative character to the former process. In Knowing and the Known, Dewey and co-author Arthur F. Bentley (1949) proposed adoption of a wholly new "transactional vocabulary" as a precision tool for a new mode of scientific inquiry, whereby inquiry itself was recognized as a species of transaction between inquirer and observed phenomena. Even before the publication of Knowing and the Known, literary theorist Louise M. Rosenblatt had applied an implicitly transactional model of the relationship between organism and environment to the relationship between reader and text. She described this dynamic model of the reading process in Literature as Exploration (first published in 1938), a work that has inspired an ongoing revolution in the teaching of reading and literature at all instructional levels. In the first edition of this work, Rosenblatt employed Dewey's original term--"interaction"--to describe the dynamic relationship between reader and text. Following the publication of Knowing and the Known in 1949, Rosenblatt began systematically to appropriate Dewey and Bentley's transactional terminology in her analysis of the reader-text relationship. Educators who share the transactional vision of Dewey and Rosenblatt tend to see the role of the teacher as that of a facilitator of reader-text transaction and of reader-reader transaction as arbitrated by the text, rather than as an imparter of authoritative interpretations of texts. Envisioning potentialities for students' growth through such transactions gives rise neither to sanguine optimism nor to despair, but rather to a hopeful meliorism. Acknowledgments I am grateful to all who have encouraged, supported, and guided my work on this dissertation, including family and friends worldwide. Thank you, all! I would especially like to thank my committee, Dr. Jim Garrison, Dr. Patricia P. Kelly, Dr. Jan Nespor, Dr. Warren P. Self, and Dr. Robert C. Small, Jr., for correcting and confirming the course of my writing. Most of all, I thank Jim Garrison for many helpful conversations. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations.......................................................................................................................v Preface...............................................................................................................................viii Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Evolving Paradigm of Transaction ...........................................................10 Dewey's Transactionally-Framed Interactional Analysis..........................................22 Chapter 2: The Poem: Reader and Text in Transaction ....................................................36 Dewey's Anti-dualistic Transactionalism ..................................................................41 Dewey's Deconstruction of Boundary Between Organism and Environment...........52 Dewey and Bentley's Construction of Transactional Space-Time ............................58 Rosenblatt's Anti-dualistic, Transactional Vision of Reader and Text.......................66 Rosenblatt's Deconstruction of Boundary between Reader and Text........................66 The Transactional Space-time of the "Poem" ............................................................71 Chapter 3: The Self "Wrought Out" in Transaction..........................................................79 Dewey's Theories of Individuality and Self...............................................................80 Chapter 4: Poem and Self: Potentialities Mutually Actualized in Reader-Text Transaction................................................................................................95 Aristotle: Potentiality as a "Lower Degree of Being" ...............................................97 Dewey: Potentiality and Actuality Equally Real and Existent...............................101 Dewey: Potentiality as Power ................................................................................103 Emergence of Self and of Poem: Indeterminate Process vs. Movement toward Fixed Ends...................................109 Aristotle: Form as Fixed End ..................................................................................109 Dewey: Form as Snapshot of an Evolving Process.................................................116 Texts as Potential Works of Art ..............................................................................126 Figure 1: The Efferent-Aesthetic Continuum: Reader's Potential Stances in Transactions with Texts........................................133 Readers as Potentially Intelligent and Responsible..................................................136 Chapter 5: Implications for Educators............................................................................143 The Teacher as Facilitator of Reader-Text Transaction...........................................143 The Teacher as Self-revelatory Fellow Reader: Modeling Reader-Text Transaction .....................................................................144 The Teacher as Fellow Participant in Communal Meaning Making: Modeling Reader-Reader Transaction..................................................................150 Honoring Individual Evocations of Texts As ÒDifferent Reals of ExperienceÓ .......160 RosenblattÕs Melioristic Vision: I. Classroom Dialogue Embracing ÒDifferent Reals of ExperienceÓ of Literature: A Laboratory for Participatory Democracy ....................................................168 RosenblattÕs Melioristic Vision: II. Recognizing StudentsÕ Capacity for Growth as a Potentiality to Be Wrought Out................................................................171 The TeacherÕs Growth as a Potentiality Transactionally Wrought Out..................175 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................179 Vita...................................................................................................................................188 iv Abbreviations As indicated in the footnotes, works frequently cited have been identified by the following abbreviations: A Ross, Aristotle AE Dewey, Art as Experience ATA Bechler, Aristotle's Theory of Actuality BWA Aristotle, Basic Works of Aristotle BSR Dewey, "Brief Studies in Realism" CCC Rosenblatt, "Continuing the Conversation: A Clarification" CCE Dewey, "Contributions to A Cyclopedia of Education" CE Dewey, "Conduct and Experience" CF Dewey, A Common Faith DE Dewey, Democracy and Education DMLPP Garrison, "Dewey's Metaphysics: A Living Postmodern Perspective" E Dewey and Tufts, Ethics EN Dewey, Experience and Nature FSTB Bentley, The Factual Space and Time of Behavior FSTS Dewey, "Foreword to Seventy Times Seven" HNC Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct IDP Dewey, "The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy" IE Dewey, "Individuality and Experience" v IEEL Dewey, "Introduction to Essays in Experimental Logic" JDPT Hickman, John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology KK Dewey and Bentley, Knowing and the Known LBLF Rosenblatt, "Looking Back and Looking Forward" LE Rosenblatt, Literature as Experience LIR Rosenblatt, "Literature and the Invisible Reader" LT Rosenblatt, "Literary Theory" NE Dewey, "Nature in Experience" NRP Dewey, "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy" PC Ratner and Altman, John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley: A Philosophical Correspondence, 1932-1951 PIE Dewey, "The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism" PCSLJ Richards, Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment PE Rosenblatt, "The Poem as Event" PP Poirier, Poetry and Pragmatism PU James, A Pluralistic Universe QC Dewey, The Quest for Certainty RCC Golden, "Reading in the Classroom Context: A Semiotic Event" RDPER Garrison, "Realism, Deweyan Pragmatism, and Educational Research" RP Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy RTP Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem: A Transactional Theory of the Literary Work SLT Dewey, et al., Studies in Logical Theory vi STPT Dewey, "Syllabus: Types of Philosophic Thought" TI Dewey, "Time and Individuality" TTRW Rosenblatt, "The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing" VTVI Rosenblatt, "Viewpoints: Transaction Versus InteractionÑ A Terminological Rescue Operation" WSPR Caraher,