Different colored lenses allow them to see the same thing in different ways. Each time they looked through a different lens, they saw something new.

Long ago astronomers discovered that the lenses on their telescopes bent light by

different amounts, thereby making certain colors stand out. In order to study

specific images in the heavens, they discovered they could change the lens

they look through.

They can now add filters that allow only one color of light through. By looking

through a lens that only allows that one color of light through, certain images are

more clear and easier to read.

My Questions

Can literary theories be used effectively in a high

school classroom?

Should they be?

My Answers:

YES! and WHY NOT?!? As long as they are taught as strategies

to enhance a reading experienceand NOT as a set of

governing rules to be mastered

In other words…

We can show students how using literary theory acts a type of lens through which we can look at a text and see different things!

Feminism

Marxism

Reader Response

New Historicism

Traditional

Mythological/Archetypal

“What could poststructuralism, new historicism, deconstruction, Marxism, and feminist literary theory possibly have to do with the average adolescent, just struggling to grow up, stay alive, get through school, and make the most of things? Why it sounds almost like suggesting that passengers taste truffles as the Titanic sinks. It sounds as if I’m promoting a sort of theoretical fiddling while the Rome of our sacred vision of successful public education burns.”

- Deborah Appleman

“Students already suspect that we English teachers meet together at conferences and make up terms like tone, symbol, and protagonist just so we can trick them on the next test, wreck something that was just starting to seem like fun, or complicate something that just starting to get more simple. If theory is going to be believed and used by students, if it is somehow going to become an integral part of their repertoire of reading, then it needs a chance to make a case for itself, even if that means beginning slowly and subtly.”

- Deborah Appleman

Someone might love to consider a Feminist perspective while another will really latch onto the ideas behind Archetypal Criticism. Some might naturally be responding with a new historicist approach and another employing Reader-Response Theory without realizing it.

If our goal is to get as many students as we can engaged in a text, we greatly increase the chances by offering them these tools. Nothing we do will connect with 100% of our class 100% of the time, but by showing our students options, we increase the chance that a lot of them will connect with something.

Teaching literary theory in a secondary setting doesn’t have to be scary or overwhelming for students or for teachers. If these are taught as strategies, lens through which to consider alternate perspectives as they read, students are more likely to find an approach that allows them to engage more fully in the texts they read—both in and out of the classroom.

Possible Example: Marxist view of Hamlet:

Puts authority into question • Power, Power—Who’s Got the Power?• Why is it the gravediggers seem to

understand things better from the bottom than the king does from the top?

So what? (I’m glad you asked) Power, Power—Who’s got the power in my

high school? (Cliques) Students can question the content of their

own education—what is present and what is absent.