Moving Ground: Some thoughts on literature as a school subject

Abstract

This paper is about the journey of a reader as a pupil and a teacher in three different contexts: the Greek and the English mainstream educational systems and the Greek community schools of London. Supported by accounts of autobiographical material there is a presentation of the dilemmas that a teacher needs to face when she teaches a literary text in a class. Questions are posed on why literature should form a subject of the curriculum, what should be taught, and how readers and the reading process are to be perceived. Finally, the link between literature and identity is considered, a link that suggests the curricular subject of literature as a locus for the creation of meanings and the shaping of identity.