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1. Forty Years on: Touchstones Now (EJ792472)
Author(s):
Benton, Michael; Benton, Peter
Source:
Children's Literature in Education, v39 n2 p135-140 Jun 2008
Pub Date:
2008-06-00
Pub Type(s):
Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Peer-Reviewed:
Yes
Descriptors: Anthologies; Poetry; Childrens Literature; Politics of Education; Social Influences; Foreign Countries
Abstract: The "Touchstones" series of poetry anthologies was first published in the UK between 1968 and 1972 in five volumes. Over a million copies and three revisions later, "Touchstones Now 11-14" appeared in the summer of 2008. Few, if any, books for the classroom can claim such longevity. In this article, the compilers of the anthologies, Michael and Peter Benton, look back over the 40 years of the series' life. They reflect upon the principles which have guided their choices; and the social and political pressures, often exerted by governments, which they have confronted in their attempt to help school students become enthusiastic, committed and discriminating readers of poetry. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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2. Reading Biography (EJ772117)
Benton, Michael
Journal of Aesthetic Education, v41 n3 p77-88 Fall 2007
2007-00-00
Descriptors: Biographies; Aesthetics; Aesthetic Education; Authors; Poets; Writing (Composition); Reader Text Relationship; Empathy; Reading Instruction
Abstract: Biography is a hybrid. It is history crossed with narrative. The biographer has to present the available facts of the life yet shape their arbitrariness, untidiness, and incompleteness into an engaging whole. The readerly appeal lies in the prospect both of gaining documentary information, scrupulously researched and plausibly interpreted, and of experiencing the aesthetic pleasure of reading a well-made work of art with a continuous life story and a satisfying closure. "In the family of literature," one of its most respected practitioners asserts, "biography seems to be the product of a strange coupling between old-fashioned history and the traditional novel." The invitation of biography is thus a dualistic one; the aesthetic experience it offers stems from the twofoldness of its nature and from the stance that this imposes upon the reader. Literary biographies of poets and novelists offer a particularly fruitful area of study since their subjects have a special concern for aesthetic experience and the biographers' main interest lies in the relationship between the life and the works. This article focuses on biographies of writers. By triangulating the roles of the biographer, the biographee within the biographical text, and the reader one can conceptualize the elements that make up the invitation of the genre. (Contains 39 notes and 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
3. Literary Biography: The Cinderella of Literary Studies (EJ720151)
Journal of Aesthetic Education, v39 n3 p44-57 Fall 2005
2005-00-00
Descriptors: Authors; Biographies; Narration; Comparative Analysis; Literary Criticism; Educational Benefits
Abstract: This article begins by contrasting the popularity of biography in the general culture with the neglect of literary biography as a branch of literary studies. The argument follows from the hybrid character of a genre in which history is crossed with narrative. Using concepts drawn from narratology, it shows how biography's handling of life stories is both like and unlike that of fiction. Narrative is not neutral but imposes a shape on "real life histories" involving selection, continuity, coherence, and closure. These four elements are discussed with particular reference to the two classic literary biographies--Boswell's "Life of Dr. Johnson" and Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte." Two features unique to reading literary biography are identified: how readers must accommodate the image of the "implied author" constructed from the writer's works with that presented by the biography, and the asymmetrical time lines of the writer's "life narrative" and "literary narrative." Literary biography is then shown to occupy an uncomfortable position between factual and fictional truth. The article ends with the educational benefits of studying literary biography--as a source of values, as a context for literature, and as a genre study in its own right. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
4. Canons Ancient and Modern: The Texts We Teach. (EJ614139)
Educational Review, v52 n3 p269-77 Nov 2000
2000-00-00
Journal Articles
N/A
Descriptors: British National Curriculum; Elementary Secondary Education; English Literature; Foreign Countries; Politics of Education
Abstract: Presents propositions about the literary canon in the British National Curriculum: it betrays sacred origins, it is a social construct, its control reflects political power, it is not inevitable, and neither the unitary nor the pluralistic model is without flaws. A middle ground between centralized prescription and free for all is advocated. (SK)
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5. The Image of Childhood: Representations of the Child in Painting and Literature, 1700-1900. (EJ525785)
Children's Literature in Education, v27 n1 p35-60 Mar 1996
1996-00-00
Reports - Evaluative; Historical Materials; Journal Articles
Descriptors: Art History; Children; Childrens Literature; Eighteenth Century Literature; Higher Education; Ideology; Nineteenth Century Literature; Painting (Visual Arts); Romanticism
Abstract: Examines issues about the representation of children in art during the 18th and 19th centuries: (1) main representations during this period; (2) principal influences affecting the construction of these images; and (3) whether the verbal and visual arts conceptualize childhood in similar or different ways. Looks at three influences on writers and painters: ideology, artistic convention, and money. (TB) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
6. The Self-Conscious Spectator. Occasional Papers, 30. (ED401212)
1994-12-00
Information Analyses; Reports - Descriptive
Descriptors: Aesthetic Education; Aesthetics; Classroom Techniques; Critical Reading; Foreign Countries; Literature; Visual Arts
Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of aesthetic response in relation to both literature and painting. Although "spectator theory" crops up in various forms in accounts of what happens when one reads stories or looks at pictures, the original intention of accommodating both under a single theory proved too complex. The paper, therefore, is confined to the visual arts. Nonetheless, English teachers who are familiar with the notion of the spectator role in reading in D. W. Harding's theoretical work, and writing in J. N. Britton's classroom studies will recognize the connections between reading, writing and viewing that are implied here. Other correspondences in contemporary literary and visual theory also are hinted at, not least in references to the work of Gombrich and Iser, and in the notion of "stance," which owes something to Rosenblatt, and with which the paper begins. Contains 21 references. (EH) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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7. Education and the Sister Arts. Occasional Papers, 35. (ED401210)
Information Analyses; Guides - Non-Classroom
Descriptors: Aesthetics; Art; Foreign Countries; Humanities; Interdisciplinary Approach; Literature; Painting (Visual Arts); Teaching Methods
Abstract: This paper is divided into two parts. The first part, "Speaking Pictures and Visual Poems," briefly considers the origin of the term "sister arts." Discussed are the three main features of the historical relationship between painting and literature in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and draws out their educational implications. Part 2, "Teaching the Sister Arts," deals more explicitly with teaching. Examples of recent "pairs" of paintings and poems are discussed in which can be observed both the poets' responses to their chosen paintings and some students' responses to a painting and a poem it inspired. The paper concludes with a brief comment on the pedagogical benefits that can accrue from working with such materials and methods which, by their name, define the role of the collaborative reader of two interrelated art forms. (EH) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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8. Reader Response Criticism in Children's Literature. Occasional Papers, 15. (ED390045)
1993-10-00
Reports - General; Information Analyses
Descriptors: Childrens Literature; Elementary Secondary Education; Individual Development; Literacy; Literary Criticism; Literature Appreciation; Reader Response; Reader Text Relationship; Student Needs
Abstract: Since the 1950s, literary study has experienced a major paradigm shift. M. H. Abrams' notion that the author, reader, and the signified world are arranged like satellites around a stable text has been succeeded by one that acknowledges the reader to be a central determinant in any "reading" of a text. Five themes related to reader response criticism and its pedagogical applications have emerged lately. First, in the area of how the reader responds to literature, the teacher-researcher has been the principal player because it is the teacher who is in the best position to observe the process. There are a range of materials available dealing with several categories of response, i.e., response to fictional narrative, response to poetry. Second, the issue of how children develop in their reading, one of the most frequently raided, has been approached in four main ways: personal reminiscences of bookish childhoods; the growth of the child's sense of story in relation to Piagetian stages of development; the development of literacy; and deductions drawn from surveys of children's reading interests and habits. Third, scholars have begun to hypothesize about how readers differ in their reading practices. Fourth, reader response inquiries have been conducted in three areas concerning children's concepts and social attitudes: (1) multicultural and feminist studies; (2) whole cultural studies; and (3) cross cultural studies. Fifth, studies that closely examine particular texts while drawing on particular theorists are rare. (Contains 129 references.) (TB) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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9. Literature Teaching and the National Curriculum. Occasional Papers, 14. (ED390044)
Opinion Papers
Descriptors: Academic Standards; Adolescent Literature; British National Curriculum; Childrens Literature; Elementary Secondary Education; English Curriculum; Foreign Countries; Government Role; Guidelines; Language Arts; Literary Criticism; Literature Appreciation; Reader Response; Student Needs
Abstract: The institutional view of literature in the National Curriculum of Great Britain shows a dramatic belittlement in its revised version. It lacks a coherent literary or pedagogical rationale and substitutes a functional one in which over-simplification purports to be clarification. The institution is primarily concerned to define English literary heritage; it is more interested in control than in curriculum. For this reason, the issues of literature and learning are ignored; tests of levels of attainments are the levers of control. Opposition to Great Britain's National Curriculum could focus on three basic issues that have been the subject of advances in literary studies over the past 25 years and are either neglected or misunderstood in the National Curriculum. First, policy makers must understand that texts are no longer autonomous but are rather fluid, conditioned by the culture and personal inclinations and experience of the reader. Second, a child's reading ability is not systematic but idiosyncratic and serendipitous. Third, a prescribed canon of books is not workable. Current literary scholars regard the canon as evolutionary, subject to the shifting values being negotiated by a culture. (Contains 40 references.) (TB) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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10. Reading and Teaching Literature. Occasional Papers, 13. (ED388989)
1993-01-00
Reports - Research; Opinion Papers; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Descriptors: Class Activities; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Literature Appreciation; Poetry; Reader Response; Secondary Education; Student Motivation; Writing Research
Abstract: Educators can help students develop enthusiastic, committed readers who are mentally sharp by developing approaches to literature teaching that are based upon informed concepts of reading and response rather than upon conventional inherited ideas of comprehension and criticism. A study of how 15-year-old students responded to a poem indicated that the substance of the responses shared common elements; the strategies for reading and notetaking were markedly individual; and, as storytellers, the students became more deeply involved with the literature. At least three reasons exist which help to explain why reader response has replaced New Criticism's hegemony in literature teaching: it honors both the integrity of the text and of the reader; it reflects the contemporary concern for process as well as product; and it redefines the question of value. The question remains whether response-oriented practices are appropriate for work with second-language students. A series of classroom activities were set up for first-year students in a Danish university to engage them more fully in the process of response. These students found the verbal/visual combinations of the activities as engaging and accessible as had the students in the earlier study. Teaching methods based on reader-response approaches should engage and motivate students, trust the reader, trust the text, and regard the practice of critical evaluation. (Contains figures which illustrate students' responses to poems and 39 references.) (RS) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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