Dear Sir,
About approaches to literature in the American Grad school attended we are
given a sizable selection of critical methods starting with Wilfred L.
Guerin's, et al. Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. This
handbook starts soon with the Historical-Biographical, then the
Moral-Philosophical, to the text and genre, then after several sections of
relevant examples, Huck Finn, Young Goodman Brown, Hamlet, and Marvell's "To
his Coy Mistress," moving on to the Formalist Approach, the psychological
Approach, Mythological and Archetypal Approaches, then Feminist Approaches,
Structuralism and Poststructuralist, and wind it up in this 2 hour course,
supplemented by The Art of Literary Research, with Aristotelian (with the
Chicago school) Genre crit, the history of ideas, linguistics and lit.,
stylistics, rhetorical, phenomenological (the crit of consciousness,
genetic, hermeneutics, dialogics, Marxist, new historicism, and
reader-response. The majority to be assimilated by mid-term. Of course, the
University is not considered a liberal arts uni, but rather a comprehensive.
They frankly kick or butts with the usual in the face criticism of all your
mental and intellectual flaws constantly, but that is besides the point,
which I just wanted you to see the curriculum and that which is represented.
My apologies for such long-windedness. I merely thought you might be
interested.
Scott Reynolds
----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Pearlman <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 1999 10:13 PM
Subject: Re: Pedagogical Question
> Dear Antje,
>
> HOW TO READ is not being particularly taught much at American
universities--
> maybe not anywhere anymore, I fear. What is being taught in graduate
> English studies at American universities is, first, an ideological
> point of view to act as a filter in order to prejudge what you are
> reading (even to the point of having an opinion BEFORE you read a text),
> a filter which then enables you to find in any text whatsoever exactly
> what you are expecting to praise or condemn, and which enables you to
> ignore everything else--that is, everything of value in the text. This
> procedure guarantees that the student will save much time otherwise
> needlessly wasted in unsponsored, undirected thinking--a process that,
> in any case, might dangerously eventuate in the student's arriving at an
> opinion that differs from that of his or her professor. In addition,
> we have imported all our filters from France (okay, a few from
> Germany, maybe), so I can't figure out why the French are trashing
> McDonalds and blaming *us* for cultural colonialism.
>
> ==Dan Pearlman
>
> At 11:34 AM 9/2/99 +0200, you wrote:
> >Dear professors,
> >
> >From my point of view as a student in the final stage of my master thesis
> >(German Magisterarbeit) I have to tell you, that after I learned _how_
to
> >read, how to ask questions to a text, I've always liked primary texts
> >better. The important thing is to teach how to read which I think is
being
> >done more at American universities than in most of Germany?!? It is
always
> >so much to be discovered in primary texts which other writers of
secondary
> >literature haven't found or didn't think of importance. It's never wrong
to
> >read secondary texts too, but never without the primary source. There is
> >always a fashion or a certain point of view under which a secondary text
is
> >written, but I'd rather have my own point.
> >
> >Antje Pfannkuchen
> >
> >
> >
> >>Robert,
> >>I could not agree with you more about the primacy of the texts and the
> >>sources! But we might not hold the majority view in this regard. On a
> >>medieval list to which I subscribe, a professor emeritus, referring to a
> >>compendious work of literary history, opined that you could find out
> >>"everything you need to know" about any poem written during the period
from
> >>that reference work. Yikes.
> >>Tim Romano
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Robert Kibler wrote:
> >>[...]
> >> I see his point, but at the same time, think that working over specific
> >>texts not only allows students to acquire a sense of the work, its
times,
> >>but that doing so also develops critical skills that will be important
to
> >>them wherever they go. Second hand information is just not that
conducive to
> >>the development of critical thought. [...]
> >
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>
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