강의실에 학생이 있는가? 영시 수업과 문학이론

Are There Students in This Classroom? : Teaching Poetry and Theories of Literature

In “The Pedagogical Turn,” Gerald Graff diagnosed that recent theories of literature have a strong tendency to approach literature in terms of teaching, and that the gap between research and teaching, which theories until 1990s only contributed to widen further and further, is now being bridged. But I find Graff too ideal, especially if the Korean undergraduate classroom situation is taken into consideration. This paper argues that any attempt to apply literary theories to English literature is destined to fail for students whose command of English lags far behind that of native speakers. There are two main reasons: one is theoretical, the other practical. Theories of literature are fundamentally text-oriented and investigate diverse modes of textuality by asking indefatigably what constitutes literature as literature. As such, theories allow our teachers to approach texts from new perspectives: texts are given the continuous process of deconstruction and reconstruction, of unlearning and relearning. Theories defamiliarize. But here we have to ask a question concerning the subject of this defamiliarization. Who is in need of defamiliarization? It is not for students, but for teachers. And it follows that research-oriented teachers intend to teach students who do not exist, confusing ideality with reality. Research teachers try to deconstruct students' knowledge of literature to which they have never been exposed before. Quite naturally, students are isolated not only from literature, but also from teachers who do not recognize their existence. Theory-oriented teachers tend to ask a question such as "Is there a text in this class?" But the most necessary and urgent question to be asked by teachers, if they do not forsake their role as teacher at all, should be "Are there students in this class?" The text-focused teaching situation should be transformed into intersubjective learning situation mediated by the text. The text is not an autonomous entity to be treated ontologically, but a means to be used for the intersubjective interaction on the one hand, and for the students' self-understanding on the other.