{"id":1764,"date":"2010-10-15T17:12:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T15:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=31"},"modified":"2010-10-15T17:12:41","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T15:12:41","slug":"how-many-books-does-it-take-to-know-the-basics-of-victorian-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2010\/10\/15\/how-many-books-does-it-take-to-know-the-basics-of-victorian-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"HOW MANY BOOKS (DOES IT TAKE TO KNOW THE BASICS OF VICTORIAN FICTION)?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A student in my Victorian Literature class complains (the third time in five weeks) that we\u2019re reading too much and too fast for this subject. I do worry, as I know that he is bright and capable \u2013also that, like too many of our students, he works, given the serious scarcity of grants in our system. His complaint, by the way, is motivated by my blurting out in our final, seventh session on Wuthering Heights<\/em> that it\u2019s shameful that students haven\u2019t finished reading it yet. Typical reaction, right? Mine and his.<\/p>\n

How much is too much, though? I don\u2019t think that a graduate in English (as a foreign language) can claim s\/he has a basic knowledge of Victorian fiction if that\u2019s based on fewer than four texts. As for speed, working out how many pages of wordy 19thC English an average Spanish second-year student of, well, English can read in one hour leads nowhere: the problem, I feel, is, rather, how many hours students devote to reading. Or do I mean endure reading non-stop? (Excuse me if I offend the truly devoted readers)<\/p>\n

Essentially, there are two ways of teaching Literature. You may teach a History of Literature based on plenty of data and brief passages from literary sources, and leave to students the choice of how much Literature they actually read. The risk? Students may read no book at all \u2013maybe not even a poem. Instead, we select a few representative texts and comment intensively on them (with groups of up to 100 students…, 40\/50 on average, a small miracle!). We do offer introductions but, basically, we trust students to read History of Literature on their own. The risk? Students may read no secondary sources at all and end up with a confusing, patchy image of the History of English Literature.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s driving us, teachers who favour close reading, up the wall, is that students hardly ever read the set books BEFORE we start commenting on them (some NEVER do, as one of the best students I\u2019ve ever hard candidly disclosed). Also, once started, they take very long to finish. English Literature teachers in Spain complain about this all the time: how are you supposed to analyse a text without students\u2019 being previously familiar with it? I\u2019ve even had students asking me not to spoil their reading by commenting on the book\u2019s ending!! <\/p>\n

This makes classroom close reading terribly constrained, as it imposes an awkward chronological order on what we comment on, for we patiently wait for students to read on (plod on?). At least, I do, or have to. It also keeps analysis at a very elementary level, at least until the last sessions (or so I thought!!). I\u2019ve found myself recommending to my students that they read plot summaries before they read each chapter, which, yes, I know, sounds desperate… And I don\u2019t even want to think today about whether my students are reading the secondary sources in English (4 articles, compulsory; 1 book, recommended). Some other day…<\/p>\n

I wonder whether my colleagues in the Spanish or the Catalan Departments face the same problem, working, as they do, in our own language(s). I also wonder if this is happening in Britain… Somebody tell me!!<\/p>\n

The main reason for our difficulties is, I\u2019m sorry to say, that the English students learn in secondary education is painfully inadequate. It\u2019s amazing how a novel that seems quite accessible becomes, the moment I read a passage aloud in class, an almost impenetrable maze. Yet, we\u2019re too pressed for time to wait for our students to have a good enough command of English to read fast, much less to appreciate the nuances. Surely, there\u2019s a minimum they should read before graduation.<\/p>\n

A colleague suggests that I reduce my list of four down to two books, but if we go down that road we might end up reading just ONE book and maybe need a whole year. Yes… that how Victorian readers read but this is a luxury we, as teachers, can\u2019t afford nor allow students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student in my Victorian Literature class complains (the third time in five weeks) that we\u2019re reading too much and too fast for this subject. I do worry, as I know that he is bright and capable \u2013also that, like too many of our students, he works, given the serious scarcity of grants in our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victorian-literature","category-wuthering-heights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}