What do you think of studying literature as a particular style of writing?

[Kfamily]

What do you think of studying literature as a particular style of writing such as Classical Writing does? I have also found some older books on Google that do that same thing?

 

Sort of like this...Narrative writing with literature that are good examples of this style of writing, descriptive writing with literature with good examples of description, etc. with exposition and argument, etc. finishing the senior year of high school with more difficult works. CW does this with narratives, maxims and the essay, history, biographical writing and speeches, etc.

 

Matching lessons in writing along with reading and studying literature that demonstrates this type of writing...does that make sense?

 

Just thinking about it...it does have its advantages...?

Edited November 22, 2009 by Kfamily

[Ester Maria]

What do you think of studying literature as a particular style of writing such as Classical Writing does? I have also found some older books on Google that do that same thing?

 

Sort of like this...Narrative writing with literature that are good examples of this style of writing, descriptive writing with literature with good examples of description, etc. with exposition and argument, etc. finishing the senior year of high school with more difficult works. CW does this with narratives, maxims and the essay, history, biographical writing and speeches, etc.

 

Matching lessons in writing along with reading and studying literature that demonstrates this type of writing...does that make sense?

 

Just thinking about it...it does have its advantages...?

I wouldn't suggest it. :)

 

There are a couple of issues with it:

1) There are very, very few works which can be so easily categorized, being consisted in one "writing style" in their entirety. In the vast majority of the high school level works you can't exactly pinpoint a "writing style" the way you present it.

2) The sole concept of "writing styles" is largely reading into a text - and a pretty oversimplifying one as well.

3) In my opinion, literature in high school should be studied for completely different reasons and from a different point of view than to "help with writing" or to learn to group works into invented categories (though some of those should be familiar for the sake of general education).

 

It's an issue hard to explain to some of the more "scientifically-minded" people, but literature doesn't work the way you have a piece of writing and say, aha, this has characteristics X, Y and Z, therefore it can be grouped with "narratives", "realism", "stemming from tradition A" or "thematically dealing with B". And, more important, literature shouldn't be studied that way if it can be avoided. To learn to think through labels and to project labels into a text rather than to work on the text itself can be a huge damage - not only for literary studies, but for studies of humanities in general. A lot of my former colleagues from university spent their first year basically learning how to "shift" the focus when approaching the text, because the positivist and "label" way of thinking was so deep into them that they could barely approach a text as a text.

 

That's why I'm opposed to any kind of "thematic" study of literature, or study through some kind of arbitrary "divisions" (such as this, by "writing styles").

Only my two cents though.

[Kfamily]

Thank you, Ester Maria. You've made very good points and I agree with them.

 

I'd love for you to share how you think the study of literature should be approached and why.

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer me.:001_smile: I really do come at this from the perspective of how much I have to learn and that I really do want to learn.

[TravelingChris]

I am confused by your post Maria. I do understand how it would be difficult to simply focus on writing in literature or to arrange by decriptive versus narrative vs. something else. I have seen this done in high school or junior high texts and it usually is done with selections or poetry. But I am not sure what you object to in thematic divisions. Do you mean that you have a problem with a course in poetry or drama or science fiction novels or do you mean something else by thematic?

 

I have had my oldest do an extra course in science fiction and fantasy literature. I will have my middle do one in mystery fiction.

[Pam L in Mid Tenn]

I've found that my own writing if reflected in the types of books that I've been recently reading.

 

I've read a lot of twaddle in the past few months. Those totally fun and funny little mystery books that are pure entertainment. We've had so much stress I've just needed to escape.

 

I did attempt NaNoWriMo, but gave up in week two. The reason: I was writing in twaddley dialouge with shallow characters!

 

When I'm reading classics or more literary modern novels, my creative writing has more quality overall.

 

I'd like to see the titles of the books you found. There is a used bookstore nearby and I'd like to have something like that on hand as a reference.

[Kfamily]

http://books.google.com/books?id=MvoAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=English++composition+and+literature#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

This one is English: Composition and Literature

[Lori D.]

I am confused by your post Maria. I do understand how it would be difficult to simply focus on writing in literature or to arrange by decriptive versus narrative vs. something else. I have seen this done in high school or junior high texts and it usually is done with selections or poetry. But I am not sure what you object to in thematic divisions. Do you mean that you have a problem with a course in poetry or drama or science fiction novels or do you mean something else by thematic?

 

I have had my oldest do an extra course in science fiction and fantasy literature. I will have my middle do one in mystery fiction.

 

 

I believe Maria is referring not to thematic groupings of literature, but is responding to the original poster's suggestion of categorizing and studying literature by the four main types of writing as defined by most writing programs:

- descriptive (writing specifically to describe through specific sensory details)

- narrative (writing specifically narrating or telling a story or series of events)

- expository (writing with the purpose to "expose" or report the facts

- persuasive (writing specifically to persuade readers a point of view -- to think or act in a specific way)

 

Maria's point is that this is a technique writing programs use in order to teach specific elements of writing (word choice, sentence structure, overall structurel purpose of the writing, etc.) Good literature usually contains 3, if not all 4, types of writing woven throughout the work, so you can only study short excerpts from a piece of literature in this way, not the entire work, as you will miss all of the themes, literary devices, etc.

 

I think that was her point about science/engineering thinkers, is that they initially approach studying literature through specific writing techniques, and miss the literary elements and themes -- that literature needs to be approached through a literary analysis lens, not a writing techniques lens. It is the difference between studying botany and learning about plant parts, photosynthesis, and plant classification -- vs. taking a hike and having an experience of nature which creates memory, appreciation, meaning, epiphany, etc. within you. Both are important, but lead to different results; just so with the study of writing techniques, and literary analysis.

 

 

Your examples of science fiction, fantasy and mystery are examples of genre, and yes, literature is often studied by comparing/contrasting various works in the same or in different genres. A genre in literature is a type of grouping of works similar in either:

- subject matter

- plot structure

- tone or content

- other literary devices

 

As you also mentioned, literature is also often studied, analyzed, and compared/contrasted through themes (ex: coming of age; death; resurrection; innocence; marriage; etc.), and literature textbooks often group poems and literature excerpts together to show similarities and differences in the literary devices used to develop specific themes.

 

 

Hope that is a little clearer. :001_smile: Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited November 23, 2009 by Lori D.
added info

[Nan in Mass]

I have from time to time tried to do this. It didn't work. Or rather, I wasn't able to get it to work. Maybe my children just weren't sophisticated enough, yet. We had to use excerpts and my children had trouble looking at just the excerpt and ignoring the rest of the work. Even when they didn't know the work excerpted, they couldn't look at the excerpt out of context. So for example, if we looked at a description of a house, they were unable to ignore the story of the people they assumed must live in the house. Why would the house be being described in the book, otherwise? It did not help me to explain descriptive writing to have them wondering what narrative was attached to it LOL. I love the idea of having good examples of writing in a writing book. Ours were all dreadful, except Writing History, which I could never get the children to read, and Powerful Paragraphs. Writing Strands and Format Writing were so bad that even my children noticed and commented on it. We found just what the other posts said - that real writing, writing that isn't manufactured for a writing book, is too complicated. My children couldn't see the writing as an example of whatever sort of essay they were supposed to be learning. Maybe the problem is that those catagories (narrative, descriptive, argumentative, etc.) are meant to apply to essays, not the sort of literature I was extracting. My children needed short, easy, obvious examples. I regretfully stopped trying.

-nan

[Kfamily]

Thanks Nan! That makes sense to me too.

 

 

 

Also, thanks Lori D. Your post really helped me to understand better too.

 

 

Why is writing the most difficult subject for me to teach?...:lol: There is such a nice,tidy plan for teaching say math, or latin or grammar as long as you are using good texts. Teaching science in the high school years even seems, at the very least, organized as to what to teach and when (again as long as you find texts that you like). I can organize literature and history and as long as I cover the essentials I can do this in any order without causing any real damage. But, writing....oh this is so hard for me to sort out...:confused::D

[Ester Maria]

I'd love for you to share how you think the study of literature should be approached and why.

I'm pretty much a good ol' "classicist" in that aspect - I believe that high school age is the perfect time to study literature in diachrony, i.e. chronologically.

 

I'm talking about a 3-4-5-year system which would be similar to History rotation as suggested by TWTM (which is, by the way, a model well known in European schools) and cover the most important works of fiction from the classical antiquity to the present day. That's the system we had at school, and it serves as an excellent foundation for further studies, especially when you desire to approach texts in synchrony - that's a pretty hard task to manage with quality if at some point you haven't "done" the diachrony. I believe upper middle school and high school age is perfect for that.

 

So, no thematic groupings whatsoever for that age. In my opinion, thematic groupings should be before (elementary / lower middler school) and after (when works can be studied from certain aspect and approach synchronically, regardless of the time context), not during that period.

[Pam L in Mid Tenn]

Thanks for the link. That looks like the type of book I'd like to have for a reference. I like outline showing what to teach first, second, third. That main outline could be tweaked a bit. I also like the book lists to read.

[Kathie in VA]

This is an interesting subject, one the I considered also. At this point I am doing both. We are using CW. At the upper levels (w/Maxim&Crea which is for about 7th grade and up), they include literature assignments. These assignments do correspond to the studies in CW. So in the Maxim book, we are studying beginning essays. We are also studying beginning rhetoric. CW has us studying a portion of a classic piece of literature that demonstrates one or more of the lessons we are studying. Prior to the study of that model, CW has them reading some background on the piece and then the entire piece. So that after the reading and the analysis of the portion, they practice their version of the writing assignment. I think this is working well.

 

However I too see the other benefits of a chronological literature study to correspond with our chron history studies. So we are also doing this. Although to do both, I've cut back on the amount of literature here. The side benefit to doing a bit of both directions is that they get to break out of the history cycle for a bit.

 

just another 2 cents.

[Heather in VA]

I think it's a bit of a misrepresentation to say that CW studies literature as a particular style of writing. They have literature assignments, which even in the online class are optional, but it isn't considered the only literature that needs to be read nor are the full works being read focused on as particular styles of writing. They are assigned to expand the understanding of the models being used, to give more context to the models and to expand the student's knowledge base.

 

Heather

[Merry]

"I believe Maria is referring not to thematic groupings of literature, but is responding to the original poster's suggestion of categorizing and studying literature by the four main types of writing as defined by most writing programs:

- descriptive (writing specifically to describe through specific sensory details)

- narrative (writing specifically narrating or telling a story or series of events)

- expository (writing with the purpose to "expose" or report the facts

- persuasive (writing specifically to persuade readers a point of view -- to think or act in a specific way)

 

Maria's point is that this is a technique writing programs use in order to teach specific elements of writing (word choice, sentence structure, overall structurel purpose of the writing, etc.) Good literature usually contains 3, if not all 4, types of writing woven throughout the work, so you can only study short excerpts from a piece of literature in this way, not the entire work, as you will miss all of the themes, literary devices, etc.

 

I think that was her point about science/engineering thinkers, is that they initially approach studying literature through specific writing techniques, and miss the literary elements and themes -- that literature needs to be approached through a literary analysis lens, not a writing techniques lens. It is the difference between studying botany and learning about plant parts, photosynthesis, and plant classification -- vs. taking a hike and having an experience of nature which creates memory, appreciation, meaning, epiphany, etc. within you. Both are important, but lead to different results; just so with the study of writing techniques, and literary analysis." by Lori D.

 

"I'm pretty much a good ol' "classicist" in that aspect - I believe that high school age is the perfect time to study literature in diachrony, i.e. chronologically.

 

I'm talking about a 3-4-5-year system which would be similar to History rotation as suggested by TWTM (which is, by the way, a model well known in European schools) and cover the most important works of fiction from the classical antiquity to the present day. That's the system we had at school, and it serves as an excellent foundation for further studies, especially when you desire to approach texts in synchrony - that's a pretty hard task to manage with quality if at some point you haven't "done" the diachrony. I believe upper middle school and high school age is perfect for that." by Maria

 

So, it sounds like that Classical Writing might be difficult to use alongside a 3-4-5 year rotation of chronological literature study, wouldn't it? Especially if I don't want to cause the student to view the literature, even just a part of it, through only one writing style presented as a lesson by Classical Writing for that particular piece. What about the "Lost Tools of Writing" or other rhetoric books? Don't they do the same thing as CW? I"m confused.

Edited December 26, 2009 by Merry
added to it

[Ester Maria]

"I'm pretty much a good ol' "classicist" in that aspect - I believe that high school age is the perfect time to study literature in diachrony, i.e. chronologically.

 

I'm talking about a 3-4-5-year system which would be similar to History rotation as suggested by TWTM (which is, by the way, a model well known in European schools) and cover the most important works of fiction from the classical antiquity to the present day. That's the system we had at school, and it serves as an excellent foundation for further studies, especially when you desire to approach texts in synchrony - that's a pretty hard task to manage with quality if at some point you haven't "done" the diachrony. I believe upper middle school and high school age is perfect for that." by Maria

 

So, it sounds like that Classical Writing might be difficult to use alongside a 3-4-5 year rotation of chronological literature study, wouldn't it? Especially if I don't want to cause the student to view the literature, even just a part of it, through only one writing style presented as a lesson by Classical Writing for that particular piece. What about the "Lost Tools of Writing" or other rhetoric books? Don't they do the same thing as CW? I"m confused.

I have completely forgotten about this thread, it seems like I never really did clarify on that later, I apologize. :blushing:

 

I usually don't use curricula which are discussed on these boards (as I teach most of the things in Italian by Italian textbooks), so I can't really say where CW fits here.

I didn't have in mind multiple Literature rotations, but a single one - before certain age, I don't think literature should be approached strictly chronologically; my general idea was to suggest a SINGLE Literature "rotation" (can't really call it rotation if it's a single one :D) vaguely alongside the final rotation of History (and History of Art, of Music, depending on how you study those subjects), doesn't have to be that strict. That would mean that the last 3-5 years are dedicated to chronological study of full works, supplemented by the excerpts from other works, which are deemed of importance for world and national literature (so obviously for me the emphasis would be on Italian/European literature, for you probably on something else).

 

BEFORE that age, I would work with the student learning to approach literature as an art, going through various kinds of texts, and getting down the tools of analysis, with minimal awareness of the place of those works in history - i.e. I'm talking about the study in synchrony. AFTER that, with the final rotation, the study of diachrony, i.e. taking "time" into account and attempting a "linear" study in order to create a lifelong perspective (accompanied by some broader, non-literary context, of those works and authors for the sake of general culture, but NEVER to a point of reading that context into the work!), and then going BACK to synchrony (since I think that is how works should be read and compared, though you have to do the diachrony at SOME point, or else your Literature studies are incomplete), which is probably the stage at which you're not educating them any longer anyway.

 

All of that is, however, a little off-topic; what I originally contributed to this thread with was an explanation of why am I against the teaching of literature through any kind of artificial divisions, literary "styles" being one of that. That's a simple one to explain: cause it's an arbitrary, artificial division which is at the end of the day pretty pointless.

The only study I personally recognize is either the study of a particular TEXT in a timeless fashion (call me a formalist, but yes, that would mean removing the context of the author and history and working only on the text, to the maximum extent possible), either the study of WORKS in their context and relations (i.e. diachrony). When studying multiple works no matter what's the criteria for the group, synchrony.

So a mishmash of both approaches, on texts chosen by an aritificial divison and reading that division into them, is not really my cup of tea. :)

 

Not sure if my point is any clearer, hope it is.