{"id":732,"date":"2013-11-12T18:59:42","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T16:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=732"},"modified":"2013-11-12T18:59:42","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T16:59:42","slug":"learning-to-be-less-afraid-of-the-narrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2013\/11\/12\/learning-to-be-less-afraid-of-the-narrator\/","title":{"rendered":"LEARNING TO BE LESS AFRAID OF THE NARRATOR… <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is, particularly, for our second-year Victorian Literature students who must be this week hurrying up to finish their paper proposals and thus meet the 18th November deadline. They have been asked to write a paper (1,500 words with three secondary sources) on the narrator(s) in either Oliver Twist<\/em> or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall<\/em>. I know from experience that this is for them quite a difficult task as understanding the role of the narrator presents many problems at this stage of their Literary education.<\/p>\n

This is because too often fiction is taught as if only the plot and the diverse themes each text deals with mattered, that is, as if how the text in question is built mattered less (or nothing). This is by no means the case. Actually, learning how s story is narrated is a top priority for any aspiring writer and it should be similarly important for university-trained readers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to do something a bit odd here, basically recycle my article \u201cThe Narrator as Threshold Concept: Comparing Charles Dickens\u2019s Oliver Twist<\/em> and Friedrich Engels\u2019s The Condition of the English Working Classes in 1844<\/em>\u201d (in Reading Between the Lines: Discussing Narration in the Literature Class<\/em>, eds. A. Monnickendam, D. Owen and C. Pividori, 2013 \u2013see my website for the complete text). This article describes the experiment I ran last year by which I invited my previous Victorian Literature students to become aware of the narrator\u2019s role comparing not two novels but a novel and an essay. It worked nicely but not without contradictions, as I ended up developing a set of exercises that I have finally not used again, afraid that they were too \u2018secondary school.\u2019<\/p>\n

Anyway, as I explained in the introductory segment, Jan Meyer and Ray Land have changed the face of higher education pedagogy by developing their \u2018Threshold Theory.\u2019 Their idea is that students necessarily encounter \u2018threshold concepts,\u2019 that is, portals that open \u201ca new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something\u201d (2003: 2). They only mention \u2018signification\u2019 (2003: 3) and \u2018irony\u2019 (2005: 374) as threshold concepts in Literature. <\/p>\n

Gina Wisker offers a longer list (2008: 13), including the social context and construction of texts and language, intertextuality, the reading process and critical literacy, representation and signification, ideology, and enquiry and research. Together with Gillian Robinson, she explains that Literature students too often believe that \u201cart is the copy of the real world\u201d (2009: 323). If you put two and two together, you can easily see that a major threshold concept students need to grasp is the narrator\u2019s role as the lynchpin around which art (=Literature) offers a particular representation of the real world. Funny how that is not included in Wisker\u2019s list, which does include much more sophisticated items \u2013or maybe that\u2019s why. We tend to overlook the obvious.<\/p>\n

Students were quick to get the idea that the person called Charles Dickens is a much more complex entity than the author Charles Dickens, and also to understand that the narrator in Oliver Twist<\/em> is a mask (or series of) that author-Dickens assumes. In Bront\u00eb\u2019s case it is perhaps easier to understand that the narrator is not the author, much less the real Anne Bront\u00eb, as she chose to narrate The Tenant of Wildfell Hall<\/em> through two fictional characters: a man (Gilbert) and a woman (Helen). So, last year we got a very nice crop of papers dealing with the narrator, although it took a while to refine the proposals into workable, adequate foundations. I have checked the post I wrote back in February: only 6 out of 48 papers were a fail. Good!<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re back to square one, logically, as classes are new no matter how old the experience of the teacher is. I got this question: can I discuss motherhood in Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel? No \u2013you can discuss how motherhood affects Helen as a narrator in the later part of her diary. Or: can I discuss alcohol in Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel? No \u2013you can discuss how fear of alcoholism conditions the opinions voiced by the female narrator, Helen. In Dickens\u2019s case, you may contradict Karin Lesnik-Oberstein\u2019s theory that this is the narrator\u2019s tale (and not Oliver\u2019s), perhaps explain that narrator-Dickens seems to be a variety of narrators in this text and not a unified construction (hence the inconsistency between sentimentality and the harsh social critique). And so on…<\/p>\n

Students\u2019 difficulties are complicated to manage, as one feels tempted to change tack, abandon the idea of the narrator and go back to the more habitual approach. Oh, yes, let\u2019s discuss motherhood, alcoholism, the workhouse, the justice system. Yet, those very same difficulties seem to confirm that it\u2019s in matters like this (yes, the narrator\u2019s role or any other \u2018threshold concept\u2019) that students need to work. And teachers, indeed.<\/p>\n

I miss more and more a subject which teaches us all the basics of storytelling from a writer\u2019s perspective \u2013not necessarily creative writing, or literary theory (narratology included). I mean, rather, a practical subject that would put students and teachers before the blank page and forced us to make the authorial decisions that result in this or that narrator. Wishful thinking, of course, given the rigidity of our degree structures.<\/p>\n

My sources:
\nMeyer, Jan and Land, Ray 2003: \u2018Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines\u2019. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses<\/em>, http:\/\/www.tla.ed.ac.uk\/etl\/docs\/ETLreport4.pdf<\/a>
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014 2005: \u2018Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (2): Epistemological Considerations and a Conceptual Framework for Teaching and Learning\u2019. Higher Education<\/em> 49: 373-388.
\nWisker, Gina August 2008: \u2018Connotations and Conjunctions: Threshold Concepts, Curriculum Development, and the Cohesion of English Studies\u2019 (report). The Higher Education Academy: English Subject Centre<\/em>, http:\/\/www.english.heacademy.ac.uk\/explore\/projects\/archive\/general\/gen2.php<\/a>
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014 & Gillian Robinson 2009: \u2018Encouraging Postgraduate Students of Literature and Art to Cross Conceptual Thresholds\u2019. Innovations in Education and Teaching International<\/em> 46:3: 317- 330.<\/p>\n

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This post is, particularly, for our second-year Victorian Literature students who must be this week hurrying up to finish their paper proposals and thus meet the 18th November deadline. They have been asked to write a paper (1,500 words with three secondary sources) on the narrator(s) in either Oliver Twist or The Tenant of Wildfell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,34,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oliver-twist","category-teaching-tools-and-rules","category-the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","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=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}