Abstract:
Investigates the classroom experience of English literature. The study examines the extent to which the present experience has been affected by current technicist mindsets, which has in part resulted in the mechanistic approach to text, and in the near disappearance of the personal involvement of the reader. It seeks to provide an alternative in informed attending, the primary function of which is to return the reader and his/her personal response to literature to the centre of the literary experience, and, through this involvement, to encourage an awareness and a consciousness through literary synthesis. Based on the writings particularly of CA Bowers and Maxine Greene, informed attending is rooted in the traditions from which these writers have drawn their inspiration: in particular existential phenomenology, and the European tradition that is represented by such writers as Husserl, Schutz, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Camus. Philosophical rather than theoretical in nature, this thesis is a personal statement, written from the perspective of one who sees himself primarily as a teacher and an artist, and who believes that in and through the drama of the literary experience, people may learn to transform and to transcend the maps of their socialisation.
