Teaching Literature, 11-18

Teaching Literature 11-18 Related titles: Gabrielle Cliff Hodges et al.\ Tales, Tellers and Texts Cedric Cullingford: Children's Literature and its Effects Andrew Goodwyn (ed.): Literacy and Media Texts in Secondary English Andrew Goodwyn (ed.): English in the Digital Age Louise Poulson: The English Curriculum in Schools Helen Nicholson (ed.): Teaching Drama 11-18 Morag Styles: From the Garden to the Street Teaching Literature 11-18 Edited by Martin Blocksidge Continuum London and New Yord Continuum Wellington House 125 Strand London WC2R OBB 370 Lexington Avenue New York NY 10017-6503 (T) 2000 Martin Blocksidge and the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. First published 2000 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-4794-5 (hardback) 0-8264-4818-6 (paperback) Typeset by Paston Prepress Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn Contents Introduction Notes on Contributors Part I: Teaching Literature 11-14 1 Choosing the Class Reader in Key Stage 3 (Prose) John Hactdon 2 Crooked Roads in Poetry, Drama and Art (Poetry) Sue Gregory 3 The Woman in Black and Maria Marten (Drama) Noel Cassidy vii xi 1 3 17 31 Part II: Teaching Literature 14-16 4 The Brontes and Me (Prose) Vanessa Vasey 5 "The Difference to Be Shared': Some aspects of the work of Gillian Clarke (Poetry) John Richardson 6 Twentieth-century Drama (Drama) Clare Middleton 45 47 Part III: Teaching Literature Post-16 7 Readings and Representations in The Strange Case ofDrJekyll and Mr Hyde (Prose) James Hansford 8 Tennyson: Teaching a Dead Poet at A-Level (Poetry) Martin Blocksidge 9 A Beam of Light and a Pair of Boots: Drama texts at A-Level (Drama) Martin Hoyden 10 Teaching Literature Post-18: What we read; how we read Robert Eaglestone Index 89 61 75 91 105 118 132 143 This page intentionally left blank Introduction This book offers reflections by a number of English teachers about their work. Each chapter has a specific focus in that it concentrates on a particular text or author, or on a small group of texts. Not quite all the texts are 'canonical' in the traditional sense of the word, but, by definition, they are texts which are taught in our classrooms. In the study of literature, the relationship between the text and the student is crucial, and one that has been most frequently examined in recent published work. This book seeks to explore the relationship between the text and the teacher. The student-text relationship is acknowledged in various places and must inevitably be relevant to the book's project, but this is not a how to book. It does not offer a series of lesson plans or a digest of ingenious new approaches. These are things which often transfer badly when one teacher makes them available for another to try. The focus of this book is a different one: it attempts to answer the question Which texts do we teach and why? It seeks not simply to list those texts which 'always go down well' in the classroom, but to illustrate the intellectual, cultural and emotional assumptions which a number of teachers bring to their work. In turn the book may well invite other teachers of literature to