Sing a New Song: A Fresh Look at Literary Criticism

Abstract

a necessary rite of passage: required reading/ research using the thoughtful-but too often daunting-language of literary criticism. I swallowed the belief that such exposure was essential to raise their sights, elevate the level of classroom dialogue, challenge their thinking. And over and over again, after a torturous search of holdings in our tiny rural library (and eventually, in later years, online), their pained voices pleaded: Dr. Sagan, this is really tough. It took me half an hour to read a single page; it's so dense! About eighteen years ago, experiencing mild guilt pangs at my audacity, I threw out all research assignments that mandated reference to formal literary criticism; in their place I asked my students to design their own thesis and surprise me-to link an original theory to an article found in a popular magazine they read for pleasure-e.g., Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Omni, Psychology Today, Time. Some students had the confidence to foray completely on their own (usually after checking with me to confirm they weren't pursuing too broad a premise). But the more timid souls, I soon realized, needed at least the hint of a direction to plug possible indicators/key terms into their initial online search. Once I provided them with the minimal support of a list of possible topics that might prove fruitful, even these more reluctant explorers eventually ventured out on their own, unearthing fascinating, relevant, and often controversial issues in popular magazines or newspapers-ideas that they then expanded into innovative theses. Invariably the approach met with success. I assuaged my conscience by reminding myself that the majority of my youngsters would never go on to pursue degrees in literature and would survive being forever deprived of the sophisticated insights of literary criticism. The few who did pursue a major in literature would encounter the wisdom of the critics at some later point in their college/ university careers. I set some ground rules: