Forms, Origins, Context: On Teaching Function

Abstract

How IS THE POLITICALLY CONSCIOUS TEACHER of literature to mediate between the need for instructing students in tactics of formal analysis and, at the same time, the need for explaining the artistic work by its social origins (and, so, by its ideological import)? The very dilemma is a sign of changed academic times, for during the hegemony of New Criticism (and despite the traditions of literary sociology and Marxist thought), the latter project was rarely attempted. Although he did not intend such a result, it was Northrop Frye who undercut this emphasis upon the dynamics of a single text. Searching in the Anatomy for a system of artistic discourse, constrained neither by the linear history of genres and traditions nor by the limited vistas of close reading, Frye prepared the way for a move against notions of the self-sufficient text divorced from extrinsic influences. The major assault, of course, came in the 1960s, with the demand phrased as relevance, but really asking about the social role of literature, about its function. The need to recognize the social function of literature may help the teacher escape the impasse of formal as opposed to genetic explanations, by engaging students' already established interest in the vocational goals of a college education and their pragmatic understanding of the world we share.