Fiction in the Composition Class: a Reorientation.

Abstract

Since the nineteen forties, when the New Criticism began to re-vitalize the teaching of literature in America, college English programs have typically included an introductory course that combines the close reading of short stories with the writing of analytical essays. While affirming the essential soundness of such a combination of literature and composition, this dissertation proposes a revisionist approach to this course, intended to enhance its strength by incorporating into it the valuable insights of contemporary theories of language and literature. These involve a strongly rhetorical approach to composition, a reader-response approach to literature, and a collaborative learning approach to pedagogy. Part I, rooted in a constructivist epistemology in the pragmatist tradition, argues (1) that student writing must involve active communication between real writers and real readers, and (2) that the study of fiction can provide a suitable framework for such writing. The unfortunate division within departments of English between teachers of literature and teachers of composition is seen as the consequence of an outmoded conception of language, whose ab and onment clears the ground for a merger between the two camps, with the recognition that acts of writing require for their fulfillment acts of reading, and that neither works of literature nor student compositions can be perceived or evaluated apart from their function within a social transaction. Part II takes the form of editorial materials for an anthology of short fiction. Introductory essays on reading, writing, and the study of fiction stress the interactive and constructive nature of these activities and present the classroom as an arena for dialogue among readers, writers, teachers, and texts. Subsequent sections on point of view, plot, and setting propose these terms as heuristic devices for stimulating the classroom dialogue and deepening student awareness of the dynamics of storytelling.