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Envisionment
Building
The Process of Literary
Understanding
My work suggests that for pedagogical
purposes it is unproductive to conceptualize the teaching and
learning of reasoning in general terms. In fact, there are
basic distinctions in the ways readers (and writers) orient
themselves toward making sense when engaging in the activity
for literary or discursive purposes. In both cases readers
have a sense of the local meaning they are considering at the
moment, and also an overall sense of the whole meaning they
are reading, writing, or thinking about; but they orient
themselves differently to the ideas they are creating because
their expectations about the kinds of meaning they will gain
or create are different.
Horizon of
Possibilities
A literary orientation involves "living
through the experience." It can be characterized as exploring
a horizon of possibilities. It explores emotions,
relationships, motives and reactions, calling on all we know
about what it is to be human. For example, once we read and
think we understand that Romeo and Juliet really love each
other, we may begin to question how their parents would really
feel about their relationship if they took the time to
understand its depth, and this begins to reshape our
understanding of the entire play. And then as we read on, we
might begin to question whether Romeo and Juliet are
bigger-than-life tragic figures, with their destiny somehow
controlled by forces beyond even their parents' control — more
so when we try to make sense of Juliet's decision to die. How,
we ponder, could someone have prevented this from
occurring?
Even when we finish reading we rethink our
interpretations — perhaps at one time taking a psychological
and at other times a political and at still other times a
mythic stance toward the characters' feelings and actions.
Thus, throughout the reading (and even after we have closed
the book) our ideas constantly shift and swell. Possibilities
arise and multiple interpretations come to mind, expanding the
complexity of our understandings.
In a literary
experience, reading proceeds at two levels; on the one hand
people consider new ideas in terms of their sense of the
whole, but they also use their new ideas to reconsider the
whole as well. There is an ever-emerging "horizon of
possibilities" that enriches the reader's understanding.
Readers clarify ideas as they read and relate them to the
growing whole; the whole informs the parts as well as the
parts building toward the whole. In a literary experience,
readers also continually try to go beyond the information.
From the moment they begin reading, they orient themselves
toward exploring possibilities — about the characters,
situations, settings, and actions — and the ways in which they
interrelate. Readers also think beyond the particular
situation, using their text understandings to reflect on their
own lives, on the lives of others, or on human situations and
conditions in general. In doing this, they expand their
breadth of understanding, leaving room for alternative
interpretations, changing points of view, complex
characterizations, and unresolved questions — questions that
underlie the ambiguity inherent in the interpretation of
literature.
Thus a literary orientation is one of
exploring horizons — where uncertainty is a normal part of
response and new-found understandings provoke still other
possibilities. It involves a great deal of critical thought,
but it is different from the kinds of thinking students engage
in for their other academic coursework, where the focus is
primarily on the acquisition of particular information
(whether that information is cast as memorization of low-level
"facts" or the understanding of complex theories and
arguments).
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