Teaching literature - how we could do it better

Dimitrovska, Sashka (2013) Teaching literature - how we could do it better. Teacher:Journal of the Faculty of Education – Bitola, 5 (2). pp. 57-64. ISSN 1857- 8888

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Abstract

This paper addresses the institutional context and academic practices related to the use of literary theory and criticism, with a special focus on the role of teaching literature in recent years. As theory has become more central in English departments, literary studies have in the view of many turned away from the study of literature itself to the study of theory. In the same way that a painter uses shape, color, perspective, and other aspects of visual art to create a painting, a fiction writer uses character, setting, plot, point of view, theme, and various kinds of symbolism and language to create artistic effect in fiction. These aspects of fiction are known as the formal elements. An understanding of the formal elements will enhance the reader‘s appreciation of any piece of fiction, as well as student‘s ability to share perceptions with others. Critical approaches to literature reveal how or why a particular work is constructed and what its social and cultural implications are. Understanding critical perspectives will help us to see and appreciate a literary work as a multilayered construct of meaning. Reading literary criticism will inspire you to reread, rethink, and respond. Understanding the cultural context of a story can often help our understanding of some aspect of the story itself. The social, political, and economic currents surrounding a writer can, and usually do, affect the writer‘s literary creation. Sometimes it seems so slight that the cultural context of a work may be important only because it seems reasonable to assume that all writers are to some degree products of their time.
Keywords: approaches, cultural context, literature, fiction.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Social Sciences > Educational sciences Humanities > Languages and literature
Divisions:	Faculty of Philology
Depositing User:	Saska Jovanovska
Date Deposited:	27 May 2021 07:20
Last Modified:	27 May 2021 07:20
URI:	https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/28114

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