Beyond Bob Dylan: Composition and
Literature in the Classroom
Dr. Elizabeth Howells
Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Yawping and the Bard
Robin Williams as John Keating, Dead Poet’s Society, 1989
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Dylan as the Bard
Michelle Pfeiffer as LouAnne Johnson, Dangerous Minds, 1995
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John Trimbur, “’Taking English’ Notes on Teaching
Introductory Literature Classes”
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Many of my students are voracious readers. But much of the
reading they do—science fiction, thrillers, cyberpunk,
bestsellers, romances—is disqualified ahead of time, in their
own and their English teachers’ minds, from the domain of
‘English.” Moreover, a surprising number of my students not
only consume such popular genres, they also produce them
both alone and collaboratively through self-sponsored writing.
My point here is that ‘English,’ at least as it is presently
constituted, makes little effort to recognize where or how its
own particular concerns intersect with students’ experience as
readers and their productive work as writers. Instead, if ‘Intro
to Lit’ anthologies are any indication, ‘English’ simply begins
with the assumption that students should study the genres-fiction, poetry, drama. (19)
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John Trimbur, “’Taking English’ Notes on Teaching
Introductory Literature Classes”
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What is literature?
Why is literature a required course?
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Art Young and Toby Fulwiler, When Writing Teachers
Teach Literature: Bringing Writing to Reading
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Today, many college teachers of English find themselves
trained as scholars to study literary texts, but trained as
writing teachers to study how students learn.
Preparation for teaching literature has commonly focused
on lecture demonstrations and Socratic discussion of
canonical texts, while not attending, in any deliberate
way, to the conditions, needs, and abilities of the learners
trying to read those texts. The focus is on the text, not
the learner: Here is the text, read it, learn about it, tell
back what you learned. If you disagree with the
instructor’s interpretation, be prepared to defend your
interpretation with specific evident from the text. (2)
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Composition/Literature Debate
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From: Maxine Hairston, “Breaking Our Bonds and
Reaffirming Our Connections” (CCC, 1985)
To: Erika Lindeman, “Freshman Composition: No Place for
Literature” (College English, 1993)
To: Peter Elbow, “The Cultures of Literature and
Composition: What Could Each Learn from the Other?”
(College English, 2002)
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Peter Elbow, “The Cultures of Literature and Composition:
What Could Each Learn from the Other?”
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I wish the culture of composition would learn to give an equally central
place to the imaginative and metaphorical dimensions of language. And I
don’t want my emphasis on stories and poems to obscure my larger
emphasis on all language—even if the only goal is teaching essays. Surely
many of the best and most effective essays don’t just make good use of
metaphors and images; rather, they grow out of imaginative metaphorical
thinking—out of the imagination itself. But we won’t understand the craft
of such essays unless we feel their roots in the imagination rather than
only in clear logical thinking and language.
I wish the culture of literature would learn more inherent attention and
concern for students—their lives and what’s on their minds. If it did, I
think teachers of literature would give more attention to helping students
read with involvement and write imaginative pieces. Even if our only goal
is to get students to understand a work of literature, nothing works better
than inviting students to write stories or poems that are structurally,
thematically, or rhetorically related to it. (539-540)
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Nuts and Bolts
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Writing to Learn/informal writing
Writing to Communicate/formal writing
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Writing to Learn
Pre-reading questions
 Reading responses: reading journals vs. focused free
writes
 Close reading: Writing Off a Line
 Meaning Making
 Prewriting and writing process reflections, peer group,
workshopping
 Visual rhetoric, technological literacy, and multiple
literacies
*A note on evaluating informal writing
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Writing to Communicate
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Explication
Summary
Analysis
Argument
Research paper
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Writing to Communicate: Immersion Project
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Immersion project—poem a day or text a day.
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Ehreinreich’s Nickle and Dimed
Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
Powell’s Julie and Julia
AJ Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically
Blogging based on assigned criteria to discover a “poem a day”
or “text a day.”
Public reading journal
Using blogspot, wordpress, posterous platforms
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Writing to Communicate: Commonplace Book
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5637
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Writing to Communicate: Creative Writing in the
Literature Classroom
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In “Textual Terror, Textual Power: Teaching Literature through Writing
Literature” Lynn Bloom presents the following question: “why not
encourage students to write creative texts in the genres and modes of the
works they’re studying, in response to and as a way of understanding these
works?” According to her, the lessons learned include an understanding of:
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1. The innumerable versions in which a particular experience can be rendered.
2. The relation of style to substance, style to self.
3. The significance of emphasis, de-emphasis, omissions, gaps, erasures.
4. The difficulties, ethical and aesthetic, of dishonesty.
5. The importance of each word, each syntactic structure, each punctuation
mark, in every text.
6. The critical rigor that undergirds, writing well for an external audience.
7. The necessity, aesthetic and personal, of rewriting.
8. The importance of reading literature as well as writing it, with an
understanding of the writer’s craft, the writer’s art. (80-81)
Read Wordsworth’s “Nuns Fret Not” and write a sonnet.
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Writing to Communicate: Springboard Projects
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Retell a narrative from an alternative point of view—write in voice of
character—Tobe in “A Rose for Emily”
Describe what X character would do in Y situation—what would Paul
from Cather’s “Paul’s Case” do if he was accused of plagiarism.
Retell this story/poem/play in a modern setting—“My Last Duchess”
contemporarily. The instructor could then share other revisions such
“Dover Beach” and “Dover Bitch.”
Write a prequel to the text—What was Joy/Hulga like before she met
her match in “Good Country People”?
Write a sequel to the text—What happened to the Misfit after the
events of “A Good Man is Hard to Find”?
Work with epistles or other literary forms: Donna Reiss assigns her
students to write a letter of unsought advice to old school friend in J.
Alfred Prufrock or a letter from John after the events in “The Yellow
Wallpaper” or an entry in secret diary of “A Very Old Man with
Enormous Wings” or a dialogue with Thoreau about living today
according to conscience or an email to Emerson. (In Young and Fulwiler
33)
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Writing to Communicate: Imitation
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Roman writing instruction: precept, imitation, exercise
Learning syntax and style through writing sentences like
Hemingway and Faulkner
Elbow: recast Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73” or Blake’s
“Tyger”
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Writing to Communicate: Performing a Text
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Here is how Schuster describes it in his article “Teaching
Literature Through Performance” and cites Richard Poirier:
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“When literature is read rhetorically in terms of performance, it
ceases to function as a[n] artifact of high culture that conveys semieternal truths; instead, it offers itself as a text that embodies ‘a
struggle with words and not a putting forth of something predigested
in the mind’ and it assumes ‘that the most worthy acts of writing and
reading are signs of vibrant, creative life…’” (137)
Reader’s Theatre:
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Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it Feel To Be Colored Me”
Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation”
Richard Selzer’s “The Corpse”
Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s
House”
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Writing to Communicate: Writing an Anthology
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In “We Wrote the Book on That,” John Trimmer proposes:
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“In the writing classroom, teachers coach students to create
their own texts. In the literature classroom, teachers judge
students by their commentary on other texts. In [this course],
I’ll invite students to create, arrange, and interpret their own
textbook—and see what happens” (66).
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Writing to Communicate: Literary Family Tree
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8 LAUGHING OUT LOUD
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9 VIEWING WORDS AND READING PICTURES
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Getting to Know Horror in Literature
11 LISTENING TO MUSIC
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Getting to Know Graphic Novels
10 THRILLED AND CHILLED
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Getting to Know Comic Literature
Getting to Know Stories in Rhythm
12 EXPLORING THE ALTERNATIVE
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Getting to Know Experimental Literature
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Writing to Communicate: Literary Family Tree
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About a “new” genre by “Someone who knows”
An example of the genre “They might know”
An example of the genre “The might like to know”
The literary origin of the genre in “Knowing where we
came from”
Researching the “new” genre
Experimenting with the “new” genre
As a presentation, group project, class work, or formal
assignment
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Writing About Your Experience with Literature:
Getting to Know Comic Literature
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Be funny. Many people think they are funny, but it can be challenging to
write comedy. Working in groups, pairs, or individually, try your hand at
one of the above forms: the monologue, the comic essay, a comic dialogue,
or those listed in the box at the end of this chapter. Use some of the
lessons learned from the examples you've read and attempt to walk that
fine line between comic method and serious message.
Research comedy in literature. Why is there so much tragedy in
literature? What are some examples of quality literature that is funny?
Working in groups, pairs, or individually, look into the history of the genre
through research. Develop a brief paper or presentation on one of the
following topics:
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Make a case for one or two comic works and writers that should be added to
this textbook or textbooks like it. Discuss how they maintain a focused purpose
and literary craft while using humor. Demonstrate how this work or these works
illustrate the duality of comedy and tragedy.
Develop a timeline of the comedy genre. Identify important figures in the
history of the genre and highlight one or two.
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Writing About Your Experience with Literature:
Getting to Know Experimental Literature
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Develop a piece of experimental literature. Working in groups, pairs, or
individually, compose a poem, play, or piece of short fiction. Consider first
what meaning you want to convey to your readers. Determine a theme or
message you might like to deliver. For example, what conventional belief
or status quo notion would you like to challenge? What assumption would
you like to force people to reconsider? Next, determine how best to
convey this message. What form will challenge this assumed belief? How
will you shake your reader from complacent viewing to actively engage
with your text?
Research a significant figure in the world of experimental literature. In
groups, pairs or individually, do some research into one of the writers listed
in Want to Know More? Find some examples of their work to read. Write
a brief paper or develop a presentation about one experimental writer.
Address the following questions: How is this writer’s work experimental?
What conventions does the writer challenge and how does he or she
challenge them? How does the writer force the reader to revise, rethink,
and re-envision an idea, literature, or way of reading?
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Writing to Communicate: Research Project
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New historical approaches to connect students’
contemporary worlds with literary themes
Frankenstein in context
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In conclusion:
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Lesson planning for an “experience” or “workshop”
rather than a “lecture” or “discussion”
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Works Cited
Bloom, Lynn Z. “Textual Terror, Textual Power: Teaching Literature through Writing Literature.” Young and
Fulwiler. 77-87. Print.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English 46.7 (1984):
635-52. Print.
Elbow, Peter. “Breathing Life into the Text.” 193-205. Print.
--- ---. “The Cultures of Literature and Composition: What Could Each Learn from the Other?” College English
64.5 (2002): 533-546. Print.
Hairston, Maxine. “Breaking Our Bonds and Reaffirming Our Connections.” College Composition and
Communication 36 (1985): 272-82. Print.
Howells, Elizabeth. Literature: Reading to Write. New York: Pearson, 2010. Print.
Lindeman, Erika. “Freshman Composition: No Place for Literature.” College English 55 (1993): 311-16. Print.
Logan, Shirley Wilson. “Why College English?” College English 69.2 (2006): 107-110. Print.
Reiss, Donna. “Writing before we write.” Young and Fulwiler. 33. Print.
Santa, Tracy. “Writing with students.” Young and Fulwiler. 47. Print.
Schuster, Charles. “Teaching Literature Through Performance..” Young and Fulwiler. 135-146. Print.
“Start a Commonplace Book.” Academy of American Poets Webpage. Poets.org, n.d. Web. 1 Mar 2011.
Trimbur, John. “’Taking English’: Notes on Teaching Introductory Literature Classes.” Young and Fulwiler. 1522. Print.
Trimmer, Joseph F. “We Wrote the Book on That: Excerpts from Our Journals.” Young and Fulwiler. 65-75.
Print.
Young, Art and Toby Fulwiler. When Writing Teachers Teach Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995.
Print.
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