The irreducibility of literature

Any attempt to suggest that literary criticism should form an important part of literary education in schools is met by strong resistance from teachers, aestheticians and philosophers of education. Critical discussion of the kind conducted in universities is thought to be inappropriate in schools largely because it is said to interfere with the immediate pleasure of reading and thus with the development of a wide acquaintance with literature and a taste for reading it. Whether or not this is so is, however, an empirical matter and, so far as I know, there is no research evidence to support the position. If students are ‘put off’ reading by critical discussion, or if it leads to a cold and clinical approach to literature, this may be due to the inadequacy of the teaching. Teachers who are themselves uncertain of the point of ‘critical analysis’, except as a means of getting through English exams, are unlikely to generate much sense of its importance and interest to their students.

I have already declared that one of the main contentions of this book is that literary criticism is that form of discourse which undertakes the analysis of works of literature so as to do justice to their ‘embodiment’ of meaning. I have yet to demonstrate this adequately, but if the importance of this became widely accepted by English teachers then means would undoubtedly be found to ensure that instead of being ‘put off’ reading literature by critical analysis, their students' interest in literature would be thereby deepened and extended.