Allington, Daniel
(2012).
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| DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link: | http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/0963947011435864 |
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| Google Scholar: | Look up in Google Scholar |
Abstract
Academic literary criticism emphasises both the private experience of reading and the analysis of formal textual features. Since the early twentieth century, this double emphasis has been sustained through the production of ‘readings’ or ‘interpretations’ in which claimed responses to literature are accounted for through textual analysis. This article asks how this discursive practice is reproduced and resisted in literary training, carrying out a qualitative turn-by-turn analysis of an undergraduate tutorial on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Within this classroom context, students use claimed private experiences to challenge a lecturer’s reading of this work, treat those claimed responses (some of which appear homophobic) as unnecessary to account for, and account for responses they reject in non-textual terms. For contrast, a short extract is provided from an established department member’s tutorial on William Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798). It is argued that the two instructors’ very different levels of institutional authority are reflected in their teaching styles and in the resistance or compliance that their students exhibit towards the discursive practices of literary criticism.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
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| Copyright Holders: | 2012 Daniel Allington |
| ISSN: | 0963-9470 |
| Keywords: | authority, discourse analysis, experience, homophobia, interpretation, literary training, reading, reception, resistance, response |
| Academic Unit/Department: | Education and Language Studies > Centre for Language and Communication |
| Interdisciplinary Research Centre: | Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET) |
| Item ID: | 30941 |
| Depositing User: | Daniel Allington |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Jan 2012 13:42 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Oct 2012 06:33 |
| URI: | http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/30941 |
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