Literary Theories and Teaching of English Language Arts
In this chapter, we review the historical development of literacy theories related to teaching
English/language arts (ELA). These literary theories derive from notions about valued ways of reading or
responding, for example, a transactional theory of response (Rosenblatt, 1938/1996) as well as particular
literary critical approaches, for example, feminist, Marxist, or New Criticism literary criticism.
Literary theories have shaped literature curriculum and instruction in several ways: Literary theories have
to do with more than just ways of analyzing literary texts; they have to do with the different ways people
construct meanings of texts and language reflecting different beliefs or assumptions about what constitutes
valued interpretations. And, they reflect larger cultural forces or models shaping ELA instruction and
schooling. An analysis of two states’ literature standards found that these standards reflected either a
“cultural heritage model” (Applebee, 1974) valuing historical knowledge about literature reflecting
neoconservative notions of schooling as imparting traditional values versus a New Criticism model of
close-reading of the autonomous text, reading strategies that can be assessed on standardized reading tests
that reflect a neo-liberal, auditing model of schooling (Caughlan, 2007). These cultural models of literature
instruction reflecting current neoconservative versus neoliberal framing of schooling often serve to exclude
other cultural models of literature as works of art affording aesthetic experience (Rosenblatt, 1938/1996);
expressions of diverse ideologies (Appleman, 2009; Eagleton, 2008); as reflecting competing social worlds
of characters and readers (Beach, Heartling-Thein, & Parks, 2008); or, as in the form of graphic novels or
digital poetry, alternative ways of expressing cultural insights (Caughlan, 2007). Educators need to
recognize how these competing theories and cultural models shape ELA curriculum in making decisions
about instructional priorities.
Influences of Literary Theories: An Historical Perspective
The influence of literary theories reflects certain historical forces and philosophies of education related to
the larger purposes of schooling. For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the notion that classical works of
literature provides moral training consistent with the larger didactic role of schooling served to not only
define English as a subject but to also promote the centrality of literature in the school curriculum. Literary
theories emphasizing the moral socialization and cultivation of readers through literature led to the framing
and justification of a “cultural heritage model” (Applebee, 1974) consistent with the “political tradition” of
using literature to inculcate certain desired values (Marshall, 2000) evident in the use of the didactic New
England Primer and McGuffey readers. While much of the English curriculum prior to the mid-19th
century focused on teaching grammar, rhetoric, oratory, and reading, in the 1850s and 1860s, there was the
emergence of literature as subject matter based on acquiring information about literary history of British
literature.
The importance of the didactic role of literature was evident in the British imperialist attempts to shape the
English curriculum in the mid-1800s in India. While the British authorities and missionaries recognized
1
that attempting to directly impose or convert Indian people to Christianity would be problematic, they
turned to a more indirect means—the use of literature that contained what was perceived as Christian ideas
that were equal to those in the Bible (Viswanathan, 1989), leading to the centrality of literature to the
subject of English beginning in the mid-1800s not only in India but in other countries.
In the late 1800s the primary focus on the didactic role shifted towards the Romantics valuing of the
artistic, aesthetic power of literature to foster cultural understanding and appreciation, as argued by
Matthew Arnold (1993) in Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings.
At the turn of the century, the importance of literature as providing moral instruction served to elevate the
role of drama or theater production in schools, moving away from an earlier suspicion about its corrupting
influence, leading to the organization of the Drama League of America in 1910 and the increased use of
oral reading of texts (Applebee, 1974). At the same time, while the focus of English instruction in higher
education in the 18th and first part of the 19th century revolved around oratory and recitation as essential
for preparation for becoming politicians or ministers, in the last part of the 19th century, with the need to
prepare people for specialized work in an industrial society, higher education English shifted to a focus on
written texts, leading to a long-term privileging of the written text over the oral (Selfe, 2009).
During the first half of the 20th century, the rise of Dewey’s progressive and aesthetic educational
philosophies resulted in an increased focus on transactional theory positing the value of the “lived-through”
experience with texts (Dewey, 1925/1997) as highlighted by the publication of Louise Rosenblatt’s,
Literature as Exploration (1938/1996). Rosenblatt (1991), author of the literary theory chapter in the
Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts, drew on Dewey’s emphasis on the aesthetic
experience as fostering ethical reflections on the complexity of human exerience in opposition to habitual,
conventional, clichéd perceptions of the world, theory that lay the groundwork for the later rise of a readerresponse approaches in the 1960s and 1970s.
At the same time, the increasing academic focus on literary studies, particularly in high education, led to
the rise of a host of literary critical theories, for example, New Criticism/formalist analysis in the 1940s and
1950s, followed by neo-Marxist, feminist, poststructualist/deconstruction list, New Historicism, and
postcolonial critical theories (Eagleton, 2008). However, despite the prelevance of these theories, one
survey study found that 72% of teachers reported little or no knowledge of literary theories (Applebee,
1993). However, in the 1980s and 1990s, literary theories did influence the framing of ELA curriculum,
particularly in terms of focusing on literature as an autonomous text for analysis reflecting New
Criticism/formalist theories, as well as a means of teaching critical reading/thinking skills or as an
expression of common cultural heritage (Caughlan, 2007). More recently, secondary literature teachers
have turned to explicit instruction in application of literary theories as competing perspectives or
approaches for interpreting texts in which teachers model the application of particular perspectives
associated with certain theories, for example, applying feminist criticism to analyze portrayal of gender
roles in a text (Appleman, 2009; Carey-Webb, 2001; Eckert, 2006).
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Different Types of Literary Theories
To discuss the influence of these different literary theories since the 1920s, the rest of this chapter is
organized around four basic types of literary theories influencing English language arts instruction: textbased, reader-based, socio-cultural, and New Media theories (Beach, 1993).
Text-Based Literary Theories
Text-based theories focus primarily on linguistic or structural features of texts shaping literary meaning.
New Criticism.
In the 1920s, theorists such as I. A. Richards (1929) began conducting studies of college students’ actual
responses to formulate theories of close reading practices in responding to literary language. This research
on the value of attending to the language of the text led to a later formulation of New Criticism by Cleanth
Brooks, William Empson, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, W. K. Wimsatt, Rene
Wellek, Austin Warren and others. These “New Critics” codified a set of principles that assumed that
interpretation needed to focus on the text itself through braketing out one’s subjective experiences (“the
affective fallacy”) as well as attempts to intuit authorial intent based on biographical or lived-world
contexts. They privileged the need for systematic analysis of different types of figurative language and
verbal structures “in” the text.
During the 1940s and 50s, at the university level, this emphasis on a rigorous “scientific” approach served
to legitimatize the value of literature instruction as of equal worth with the growing prominence of the
sciences and social sciences (Beach, 1993). Application of New Criticism also led to formalist instruction
involving understanding and identifying instances of character types, point of view, setting, story
development, and theme. More recent forms of close-reading involves a focus on having students assume a
more central role in identifying instances of difficulties understanding texts, leading to re-reading and
revising interpretations (Blau, 2003).
Analysis of classroom instruction in secondary schools conducted in the early 1990s found that teachers
reported a focus on both uses of New Critical/formalist approaches of close-reading, and, at the same time,
uses of reader-response approaches in fostering whole-group discussions of literature, reflecting somewhat
contradictory set of purposes driving the curriculum (Applebee, 1993). The use of New Critical approaches
3
was more prevalent in 11th and 12th grades than in junior high/middle schools and in college-bound/PA
classes. This dualism was also evident in an analysis of 530 English Journal articles on teaching of poetry
from 1912–2005 (Faust & Dressman, 2009). While many of the articles adopted a formalist, close-reading
orientation of “great” poets, an equally large number adopted a reader-response approach that challenge
formalist approaches and the limitation of privileging a traditional poetry canon.
Performative Theories.
Performative literary theories drawing on speech-act theory (Austin, 1975) as formulated by Mary Louise
Pratt, Stanley Fish, J. Hillis Miller, Jacques Derrida, and Paul de Man examine the meaning of utterances
by and in literary texts. For example, they ask whether literature itself performs actions involving changes
in lived-world situations such as that performed by the Declaration of Independence in declaring the
colonies a in independent country (Culler, 2007). Students can apply performative theories in identifying
the nature of characters’ speech acts—ordering, praising, requesting, asserting, proposing, etc., leading to
inferences about characters’ traits, beliefs, and goals, as well as the social conventions constituting their
worlds. For example, students may infer that characters who consistently issue orders are in positions of
power in a text world.
Structuralists.
Structuralist literary theorists such as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, Roman Jakobson, and Umberto
Eco, were interested in linguistic and semotic systems that define the meanings of language and signs in
texts as reflecting underlying cultural codes (Scholes, 1974). This structuralist focus led to an increased
focus on teaching the conventions underlying consistent storyline patterns and language use, for example,
how conflicts revolve around binary oppositions between good versus evil, male versus female, or dark
versus light.
Poststructualist/Deconstructionist.
Poststructualist or deconstructionist theorists such as J. Hillis Miller, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man,
Jonathan Culler, Barbara Johnson, and later Roland Barthes challenged the limitations of structuralists’
binary oppositions by perceiving how these uses of categories are shifting, unstable, problematic and
contradictory—for example, that distinctions between male versus female perpetuates limited, essentialist
notions of gender differences (Crowley, 1989). Poststructualists/deconstructionists also adopt a postmodern
critique of modernist notions of master narratives with their defined storylines and resolutions as
4
themselves limited representations of the complexity of contemporary life. In applying this approach in the
classroom, students unpack problematic aspects of categories in texts, for example, noting that Donne’s
poem, “‘Death Be Not Proud’ ‘...is very contradictory. Donne attempts to dissect death and make it smaller,
but the contradictions in the poem thwart the attempt and deals ends up staying powerful and frightening’”
(Appleman, 2009, p. 105).
Limitations of Text-Based Theories.
Critics of these text-based theories argue that locating text meaning based primarily on textual cues
implying authorial intent fails to consider individual differences in the influence of readers’ own
knowledge, beliefs, and purposes on their responses (Iser, 1980; Mailloux, 1982; Rabinowitz, 1997;
Rosenblatt, 1978, 1938/1996). Assuming that meaning is located primarily in the text fail to consider how
variations in meanings represents differences in what individual readers bring to text.
Reader-Based Theories
In the late 1960s, there was a reaction to New Criticism/formalist literature instruction voiced at the
Dartmouth Conference by British and American educators, who, drawing on earlier transactional theory,
wanted to focus more on students’ aesthetic experiences with texts (Rosenblatt, 1978, 1938/1996). This led
to a number of research studies of differences in types of students’ response to literature (engagement,
description, connection, interpretation, judgement) as varying according to differences in texts, genres, age,
gender, instruction, and stances (Purves & Beach, 1972; Marshall, 2000). For example, given Rosenblatt’s
(1978) notions of aesthetic versus efferent stances, researchers focused on the extent to which certain kinds
of instruction resulted in adopting certain stances, findings that suggest that instruction may have an
influence depending on the types of prompts employed and when those prompts are provided (Many,
Wiseman, & Altieri, 1996). Or, Janice Radway (1984) examined how female reader responded positively to
portrayals of romance novel heroines’ nurturing role in transforming impersonal males as a means of
validating their own lived-world roles as nurturers. Teachers apply these reader-based theories to teaching
by fostering students’ “envisionments” with their “living-through” experience with texts or
autobiographical connections with a text resulting in their reflections on that experience itself (Langer,
1995).
Researchers also examined how readers drew on knowledge of narrative conventions for example, how
readers, through reading literature, learn to apply “rules of notice” to attend to certain text features—titles,
first and last sentences, opening scenes, etc. (Rabinowitz, 1987). This led to a focus on instruction to make
explicit knowledge of literary conventions for interpretating authorial intent (Rabinowitz & Smith, 1998),
5
as well as making explicit the problem-solving heuristics for coping with difficulties in texts (Blau, 2003).
Psychoanalytic Theories.
Drawing on Freud and Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories, theorists such as Norman Holland (1975) and
David Bleich (1978) began to study how readers’ own subconscious needs and desires reflecting their own
identity styles influenced their responses. For example, students with a strong need for closure in their lives
may respond differently to indeterminate, postmodern literature than students with a high tolerance for
ambiguity. Or, students may describe how their identifications with characters reflect shared desires or
needs, leading to self-reflection about those desires or needs.
Psychological Theories.
Theorists also drew on cognitive psychological theory of minds and theories of narrative processing
(Bruner, 1990) to describe readers’ mind-reading, perspective-taking ability to infer characters’ mental
states, emotions, and perspectives of other characters (Zunshine, 2006). For example, in responding to
detective fiction, readers engage in mind-reading of the detective’s thinking related to shifting through
clues and recognizing instances of suspects’ evasion of the truth. These mind-reading/perspective-taking
practices are also acquired through engaging in drama enactments that foster students’ perspective-taking
through empathizing with, adopting to, and anticipating others’ thoughts and feelings (Wilhelm &
Edmiston, 1998).
Limitations of Reader-Based Perspectives.
In promoting the value of expression of individual, divergent responses based on unique aesthetic
experiences, one of the challenges facing the application of reader-based theories in the classroom is the
issue as to how to determine the validity of competing responses (Connell, 2008). Given a range of quite
different responses, are some responses more valid than others and how does one determine differences in
validity? Another limitation is that locating meaning primarily within readers’ individual differences may
not always recognize the influence of social, institutional, or cultural forces shaping those responses.
Socio-Cultural Theories
6
During the 1980s and 1990s, there was an increased interest in socio-cultural learning theories (Vygotsky,
1978; Wertsch, 1998) shaping literacy learning suggesting the importance of the influence of cultural and
ideological forces constituting texts, readers, and contexts (Galda & Beach, 2001; Rogers & Soter, 1997).
Theorists such as Stanley Fish (1980) argued for the need to focus on the influence of social or disciplinary
communities on readers’ stances, how for example, the meanings of a poem in a religion class will be
different from the meanings of that poem in a literature class. In their research on readers’ adoption of an
“information-driven” (focus on retrieving information), “story-driven” (engagment in story), or “pointdriven” (interpreting thematic meanings) stances, Hunt & Vipond (1991) found that reader stances were
shaped by the social forces operating in a literacy event—that interpreting the point of a text involves the
social construction of the point of a discussion. Socio-cultural theorists also argue that through the
imaginative, aesthetic experience of alternative subjectivities and embodied experience, students experience
different forms of ethical understanding leading to change in their social or cultural identities (Misson &
Morgan, 2006; Sumara, 2002).
Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1984) dialogic theories of the multiple, heterglossia voices in literary texts,
researchers also examined how students “double-voiced” or mimicked alternative stances, discourses, or
cultural models that created tensions leading to competing interpretations (Lewis, 1997; Knoeller, 1998).
This focus on students’ adoption of multiple voices also led to analysis of teachers’ use of open-ended or
authentic discussion questions resulting in certain student responses or uptakes (Lewis, 1997; Marshall,
Smagorinsky, & Smith, 1995; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1997), as well as student use of intertextual links to
build social relationships in discussions (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993) or their socialization into a
literary community of practice reflected in the practices of a highly engaged literary book club (Edelsky,
Smith, & Wolfe, 2002). Researchers also examined how the use of drawings or diagrams serves as prompts
for students’ verbal descriptions of their response (Smagorinsky & O’Donnell-Allen, 1998), as well as how
sharing written records of re-reading experiences leads to an appreciation of the complexity of literature
(Samura, 2004). More recently, researchers have examined how sharing narratives enhances discussions by
fostering dialogic, intertextual connections between texts and/or experiences (Juzwik, Nystrand, Kelly, &
Sherry, 2008). There has also been an increased focus on the value of spoken-word performances of literary
texts as building on students’ cultural experiences with rap/oral language experiences (Fisher, 2007; Lee,
2007).
These socio-cultural/dialogic theoretic perspectives and research fostered teachers’ attention to facilitating
the social dynamics of classroom discussions as well as the need to build on students’ cultural knowledge
and identities (Beach, Appleman, Hynds, & Wilhelm, 2010). For example, in her work on use of “cultural
modeling” for teaching literature in urban Chicago schools, Carol Lee (1993) fostered students’ use of
experiences in “playing the dozens” to infer symbolic language use in Shakespeare’s plays. This led Lee
(2007) to formulate ELA curriculum based on cultural modeling that serves to integrate language, writing,
media, and literature with students’ cultural funds of knowledge derived from their everyday experiences.
Teachers also encouraged students to reflect on how their stances are shaped and limited by larger cultural
7
forces constituting characters’ and their own race, class, gender, or age differences, leading students to
challenge dominant/authoritative interpretations or status-quo identities (Fecho, 2004). For example,
through responding to the dialogic tensions in multicultural literature, high school students began to
interrogate their status-quo discourses of racial, class, and gender differences portrayed in literature, leading
them to revise their beliefs about the prevalence of institutional racism (Beach, Heartling-Thein, & Parks,
2008).
Feminist Theories.
Feminist literary critics such as Judith Butler, Judith Fetterley, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Annette
Kolodny, Anne Mellor, and Elaine Showalter focus attention on the representations of gender differences in
texts as well as the status of women writers that often reflect patriarchal discourses, as well as the need to
foster readers’ awareness of how their stances are constituted by gender discourses (Schweickart & Flynn,
2004). In applying feminist theories to critiquing texts, students recognize instances of how institutional
forces have historically limited women in achieving agency, as well as ways in which responding to and
creating literature provide students with opportunities to express that agency (Appleman, 2009). For
example, responding to and writing horror fiction afforded working-class early-adolescent females with
ways to confront their experiences of poverty (Hicks & Dolan, 2003).
Neo-Marxism.
Teachers have also drawn on contempoary neo-Marxist theorists such as Terry Eagleton, Raymond
Williams, Fredric Jameson, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, and Gilles Deleuze who examine how
political and economic forces shape both the production and reception of texts (Eagleton, 2008). In
applying a Neo-Marxist approach to literary analysis, students focus on characters’ practices as constituted
by class differences. For example, in analyzing characters in Austin or Dickens’ novels, students note the
class hierarchies shaping characters’ practices, as then linked to analysis of markers of class differences in
their own lives.
Postcolonial Theory.
Postcolonial literary theory critiques negative, Eurocentric, imperalist/colonialist representations of
colonialist/third-world cultures that ignored the cultural differences and strengths of these cultures (Said,
1978; Spivak, 1988). Postcolonial theories highlight the hybrid tensions between dominant versus
marginalized cultural practices, hybridity that leads to challenging hegemonic discourses (Grobman, 2006).
The marginalization of Black writers has led them to grapple with their marginal positioning in society
8
(Gordon, 2000). By adopting a postcolonial stance, mainstream high school students recognized the
limitations of their cultural perspectives and learned to validate immigrant/non-dominant students’
perspectives (Johnston, 2003).
New Historicism.
New Historicist critics such as Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt focus on identifying the events
and forces operating in a particular historical period that shaped not only the writing of a text, but also its
reception. This approach can encourage students to research the historical period in which a text was
written. It can also lead student’s to compare and contrast their own historical perspectives with those
shaping the texts they are reading in the classroom (Gallagher & Greenblatt, 2001). Drawing on Foucault
and other scholars who deal with and complicate history, many of these critics are particularly interested in
issues of power within texts as influenced by institutional forces. Such an approach may encourage ELA
teachers to engage in cross-disciplinary teaching with social studies teachers to provide students with social
studies perspectives on texts.
Limitations of Socio-Cultural Theories.
Applying socio-cultural theories to challenge students’ status quo stances often results in resistance from
students reluctant to entertain alternative perspectives (Appleman, 2009). It may also be difficult for
younger students to adopt critical stances leading to rethinking their beliefs. All of this suggests the need
for teacher scaffolding and support for student grappling with dialogic, hyrid tensions (Beach, HeartlingThein, & Parks, 2008).
New Media Literary Theories
The increasing use of multimodal, hyperlinked, hypermobile, and interactive New Media/digital literary
texts require new, alternative literary theories that account for how readers and writers understand and
produce these texts. These texts (for examples, see Electronic Literature Collection at
http://collection.eliterature.org/1 [link: http://collection.eliterature.org/1]) are Web-based, composed for and
meant to be read on a computer screen or mobile device such as a cell phone, and characterized by multiple
links from pages or sections, multi-linear structures, recursive loops, sound, images, animations, video, and
data bases (Hayles, 2008; Morris & Swiss, 2006). These texts also include computer art installations;
novels that take the form of emails and blogs; poems and stories that are generated by computers, either
9
interactively or based on coded parameters given at the outset; or collaborative writing projects using wikis
or listservs that allow readers to contribute to the text of a digital work. And, these texts are also highly
performative as represented by William Poundstone’s (2002) “Ambition” portraying moving letters and
words on the screen based on the poet, Dylan Thomas’s thoughts (see Figure 21.1 [link:
http://ezproxy.lib.umb.edu/login?qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.credoreference.com/entry.do?
id=9995462#ch21.f1]).
[image: Figure 21.1 http://c1933542.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/routengart2011/fig_ch21.f1.jpg]
“An Allegory of Ambition.” Courtesy of William Poundstone.
To understand the learning involved in processing these texts, New Media theorists contrast print and
digital technologies, arguing that educators need to rethink what it means to teach and learn New Media
texts based on interactive, lateral, multimodal literacy practices defined by Gregory Ulmer (2002) as
“electracy” in which readers are co-constructors of texts. Other theorists note that although readers may
still draw on some print-based literacies and institutions in responding to digital texts, they are seduced by
assuming that the screen seems to be like print, while still realizing that the screen is not equivalent to the
printed page (Hayles, 2008).
Understanding and producing these texts involves perceiving patterns or networks based on hypertextual
connections through selecting optional pathways, something that can be a challenge for students
accustomed to linear, narrative text-processing (Dobson & Luce-Kapler, 2005). To help students acquire
strategies for navigating New Media literary texts, teachers need to provide explicit instruction on
processing hypertexts, have students contrast their experiences with print versus digital texts, share their
frustrations in navigating textual pathways, bracket familiar print literary expectations in attempting to
construct narratives or infer some primary interpretation, work collaboratively to share alternative
mappings, draw on their gaming experiences to process virtual worlds, and formulate alternative aesthetic
notions as to what constitutes engaging texts (Hayles, 2008; Mott, 2008). All of this requires both students
and teachers to learn new literary conventions for understanding New Media literary texts through
articulating the practices and features they may know only intuitively from direct experience with these
texts as well as creating their own digital literature/poetry.
Conclusion
These four types of literary theories each position texts, readers, and contexts in different ways, resulting in
10
different instructional approaches and priorities. Textual literary theories emphasize acquisition of literary
conventions for interpreting texts, ways of applying knowledge of conventions that are often modeled by
teachers as expert readers. Reader-based literary theories emphasize valuing individual differences in
readers’ aesthetic experiences of texts, leading to an emphasis on classroom sharing or enactment of
students’ unique responses. Socio-cultural literary theories highlight the importance of the social and
cultural contexts shaping the text-reader transaction, resulting in a focus on critical analysis of socialcultural forces shaping both characters and readers’ practices, for example, critical analysis of
representations of race, gender, and class in texts. And, New Media literary theories emphasize the
interactive, multimodal, and hypertextual aspects of digital literature requiring instruction in oftenunfamiliar interpretive strategies specific to understanding these texts.
Just as literary theories prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries valued literature as a means for cultural
socialization of values, each of these four types of theories also reflect larger assumptions about purposes
for and value of teaching literature (Caughlan, 2007). For example, while reader-based theories value
fostering students’ expression of their individual voice or ideas, socio-cultural theories value acquiring
critical stances on the world. Thus, different theories of and approaches to teaching literature will always
reflect the historical evolution of the functions of schooling in society.
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