Larry Teague Jr.
Comp. Theory
Dr. Matson
December 4, 2008
The Life and Accomplishments of
Peter Elbow
Peter Elbow has had a long and illustrious career in the field of rhetoric. No
student will ever escape a composition program without having come across the
persistent writings of Peter Elbow. He goes against the system from within the system by
creating new methods and theories on the regular basis.
Peter Elbow has written many works within the field of composition. Some of
the most notable are: Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing
Process, Everyone Can Write: Hopeful Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing,
Writing without Teachers, Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and
Teaching, and many more. He is currently Professor Emeritus of English at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. Emeritus means that the retired professor can still
use his title and rank, for those (like me) who are not familiar with the term.
The former English professor is probably most known for his work in the field of
composition pedagogy. Pedagogy is the art or science of being a teacher, again for those
who are not in the know. Peter Elbow is one of the pioneers of the practice of
“freewriting”. This term was advanced in his 1975 publication Writing without Teachers.
“Freewriting” is the practice of allowing students, writers, or even teachers to write
without any restrictions for a predetermined period of time. The time range is generally
within five to fifteen minutes. The only real stipulation for the process is that participants
must write for the entire allotted time period. If the writer can not come up with anything
constructive to write, then he/she must write “I can not think of anything to write” or
something along those lines until his/her thought process gets back on track.
“Freewriting” is never evaluated. That is why it is termed so. The practice occurs
in what Peter Elbow termed “evaluation-free zones”. There is no grading, ranking, or
judgment permitted within these zones. One of the purposes of this is to allow the writers
to write whatever they feel. It is designed to make the writers feel comfortable and
secure in what they are producing without any fear of repercussions from any type of
audience.
Most writers have heard the clichéd phrase “Consider your audience” at some
point or another. It is one of the founding rules of good composition. Yet, Peter Elbow
rebukes this phrase. He suggests that writers should ignore their audience. Some readers
will be shocked and instantly turned off by this statement, much like I was when I first
encountered it. I am a firm believer in considering your audience first. How could any
bit of writing be successful without the primary concern being the intended audience?
My concerns were laid to rest when I proceeded to read Peter Elbow’s essay “Closing My
Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience”.
The title leads one to think that Peter Elbow is shirking the audience. This is not
necessarily so. What, I believe, he is intending to say in this piece is that the audience
should be ignored initially. In his piece he goes on to say that the audience should be
considered during the revising process and that said consideration will most likely
improve the piece at hand, but this is not so for the initial draft. He argues that concern
over the audience’s desires can block and impede the writer during the first draft causing
a decline in quality.
This is where Peter Elbow pulled me in and made me a believer. He believes that
students are often times too concerned with what the teacher wants. The students’ desire
to please the teacher keeps them from writing what they truly think or feel. Another way
of saying this is the consideration of the audience creates less the honest pieces. In a
way, Peter Elbows ideas here resemble those of Wayne C. Booth’s. Wayne C. Booth
believed that there should be a balance between audience, scene, and author. If one of
these three parts has more power than the other two, then an imbalance is created and the
composition is compromised. Booth believed that this is why students had a tendency to
lie and be dishonest.
Peter Elbow refers to an audience as a “field of force”. He stated that as the
writer comes close to the audience the audience exerts more force on the contents of the
writers mind. (Johnson 173) In Elbows writing the audience is a constantly looming
threat. This is because of all the power that audiences have over writers. This is true in
most if not all fields, even outside of academia. It is the audience that gets final approval.
Approval is the key term here. Nancy Sommers wrote, “As writers we need and want
thoughtful commentary to show us when we have communicated our ideas and when not,
raising questions from a reader’s point of view that many not have occurred to us as
writers.” (Johnson 378) This is a well worded way of saying that as authors we
constantly seek the approval and contributions of our audience. It is this undeniable
desire in the soul of most if not all writers that gives the audience so much power over us.
Peter Elbow was concerned with audience. In his essay “Ranking, Evaluating,
and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment” he describes the problems with
ranking, grading, and liking. These are all aspects of assessment. He is not a big fan of
the first two, but he argues that teachers should make a bigger effort to like the work of
their students. All of this is representative of Peter Elbow growing belief in the
“evaluation-free zones”. He began with giving his class two weeks of freewriting and
then increased it two three weeks. In the afore mentioned essay he expresses a desire to
teach an entire course without evaluation. In the essay he does not seem to positive that
such a thing is possible. I, myself have participated in a few of these courses and know
that it is both possible and wonderful. There is something liberating about not having to
worry about being judged. Personally, I know that Peter Elbow was right because my
writing did improve when I was not concerned with who was going to be reading it and
what they were going to think about it.
In the pieces of Peter Elbow’s work that I have read I have not seen any mention
of a workshop class. I am not sure if there was such a thing before he retired or not.
Information of his personal life has proven to be extremely difficult to find. I bring it up
because I think his theories are being put to use in these types of courses. In my
experience with workshop courses all evaluation is done by the students and not by the
teachers. This eliminates the problems with power balance. In this situation the audience
is not one person with absolute authority. It is the writers’ peers who evaluate their work.
In my experience this leads to less judgment. It eliminates ranking and increases the role
of liking. There is also a great deal of freewriting done in these courses. I have never
had one in college that gave us three solid weeks of freewriting, but each workshop
course that I have taken had at least one day a week allotted for freewriting.
I find the work and theories of Peter Elbow appealing because of the freedom he
allows the writer. I feel that he is trying to relax the field of composition. He even uses
the word art to describe writing in one of his essays, which is not something one tends to
find in these academic pieces. I think that by taking the pressure off of the students and
teachers Peter Elbow allows writers get back down to the basics of freedom of
expression.