My opening anecdote poses a serious problem in the way literary interpretation is taught, but it also presents a potential solution: “If you’re going to use one text, use two texts.” In their article on fostering critical literacy, McLaughlin and DeVoogd propose that, “[strategies for cultivating an active critical stance include] ‘juxtapositioning,’ problem posing, [and using] alternative texts” (pg. 56, 2004). In my practice this year I have sought to build my students’ interpretive skills and agency through pairing literary texts with a wide range of alternative texts: news articles, visual art, video clips, historical documents and other literary texts. For reasons extrapolated upon in the following theoretical section, my paired text curricula strive to accomplish three goals.
Goals For Paired Text Curricula
- Add depth to texts by providing an alternate perspective on shared thematic content. Through only one text, it can be difficult for students identify and interpret the abstract concepts at play “below” the comprehension level. In this situation, pairing a thematically related text acts as a second eye: a second perspective on a shared theme. By teasing out the tension between paired texts, the argument of the text becomes more clear. The text, rather than a static thing in itself, becomes something mutable, existing in dialogue with other perspectives. For more on this goal, see artifact analysis of this lesson plan, in which I add depth to 9th graders' reading of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card by problematizing the book's use of child soldiers by pairing it with a news article.
- Provide a baseline of shared experience to structure the task of interpretation. Younger students can begin building interpretive muscles through basic comparative questions (“What do these two texts have in common? How do these authors feel differently about X?”), working towards more complex analysis, asking students to assume other perspectives (“How might Author A feel about this event in Text B?”). For a detailed example of this intentional construction of an interpretive schema through shared experience, see artifact analysis of these lessons on interpreting the use of dialect in literary texts.
- Practice interpretive skills by applying literary understandings to a variety of media. This essential extension of literary interpretation demonstrates to students that the systems of values and associations used for literary meaning-making can be applied to all manner of texts, as well as the real world. This bridge from understanding the word to understanding the world is essential to building students’ perceived relevancy of the study of literature, leading to a robust and sustainable investment in literacy (Freire & Macedo, 1987 in Appleman, 2015). For more on this goal, see artifact analysis of these field notes from my junior class on the structured application of an interpretive schema in analyzing visual images.
My curricular experiments so far this year sought to accomplish the above goals (in varying combinations and with varying degrees of success) in order to build interpretive skills and deepen student engagement with text. In the next section I will elaborate on the theoretical rationale of my proposed solution, which I will later use to evaluate the artifacts produced by my practice thus far.