Reading from nowhere: assessed literary response, Practical Criticism and situated cultural literacy

Gordon, John (2018) Reading from nowhere: assessed literary response, Practical Criticism and situated cultural literacy. English in Education, 52 (1). pp. 20-35. ISSN 0425-0494

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Abstract

School examinations of student responses to literature often present poetry blind or “unseen”, inviting decontextualised close reading consistent with the orientation-to-text associated with Practical Criticism (originating in the UK) and New Criticism (originating in the USA). The approach survives in the UK after curricular reforms and government have promulgated cultural literacy as foundational for learning. How is cultural literacy manifest in student responses to literature? To what extent can it be reconciled with Practical Criticism where the place of background knowledge in literary reading is negligible? This article explores their uneasy relationship in pedagogy, curricula and assessment for literary study, discussing classroom interactions in England and Northern Ireland where senior students (aged 16–17) of English Literature consider Yeats’ “culture-making” poem “Easter, 1916”. Using methods where teachers withhold contextual information as they elicit students’ responses, the divergent responses of each class appear to arise from differing access to background knowledge according to local though superficially congruent British cultures. The author proposes “situated cultural literacy” to advance the limited application of Practical Criticism in unseen tasks, acknowledge Richards’ original intent, and support the coherence of assessment with curricular arrangements invoking cultural literacy as a unifying principle.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	reading,literature,poetry,practical criticism,situated cultural literacy,unseen assessment
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Literacy and Development Group
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	26 Oct 2017 05:04
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2022 03:07
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65258
DOI:	10.1080/04250494.2018.1414408

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