Yellow Wood, Diverging Pedagogies; Or, the Joy of Text

Abstract

The battle for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people is long since lost, but a different sort of battle involving hearts and minds has been joined in our undergraduate literature courses. An influential and increasingly vocal element in our profession is suggesting that these courses should be organized around questions raised by critical theory rather than around the texts themselves in their traditional groupings by genres, themes, and historical periods. Not surprisingly, the suggestion is being met with something less than enthusiasm on the part of those who believe, Stanley Fish notwithstanding, that there are numerous texts in their classes, and that some sort of minimally mediated encounter with each should be the starting point of literary education. These textophiles are alarmed over what seems to them a potentially fatal neglect of heart, of emotional immediacies and humanistic sympathies, in the introductory process, while the theorophiles brood over the slight rendered to mind if the presence of unacknowledged preconceptions is condoned at any stage. Since such preconceptions are inevitably present and can be demonstrated by a rigorous logic not suited to matters of the heart, it would seem that the strategic prospects of the text-defenders are bleak. Nonetheless, I would like to enlist myself in their ranks, and see whether there might not be valid arguments for a provisional privileging of the text over its theoretical contexts, at least for students unfamiliar with either. In a casual conversation some years ago with William Gass, who has managed-like Iris Murdoch-to combine the careers of novelist and philosophy teacher, I asked whether he also taught occasional literature classes. His unequivocal no was followed by an explanation that I find apropos of some of our current professional dilemmas. He didn't care, he said, whether his philosophy students liked Plato or not; he was concerned only that they understand Plato's thought. But when some sophomoric ephebe-or words to that effectannounced that he didn't like Henry James, he felt an immediate, visceral surge Dwight Eddins is a professor of English at the University of Alabama. His articles have appeared in such journals as ELH and Modern Language Quarterly. He has just finished a book on Thomas Pynchon.