I think this points to the heart of my own issue, which is really that I can't quite perceive the benefit of "understanding the text" as isolated in some way from understanding the author behind it. In fact, I'm not sure what one learns from text alone that is more salient to an understanding of great literature (or anything else) than a student might learn from some progressive combination of grammar, spelling, and reading comprehension (syntax, diction, and so forth). While the study of literature as text may give language to the student of literature in order to appreciate it more deeply (and I would hope it does at least that), I can't help but think that the point of the study of literature must surely go well beyond a mere understanding of text. I believe you could study the text produced by a computer, e.g., and that might be a very interesting thing to do. As an adult, I might even say "wow," that's amazing! But being astonished by a computerized text would have nothing at all to do with why, as an adult and as a writer, I read great writers, or why I think great literature is important to read (or to be taught--and taught well and taught well with enthusiasm). I read literature and literary works in order to engage what I think is the best part of my own mind with best part of the mind of the author. In my view, if “Hal the computer” showed up in the literary canon, I think that’d diminish the canon rather than elevating the computer to the status of a great author. More likely, a teacher of literature could use the inanimate Hal and his story to illustrate what makes “real literature” worth understanding (as more than just text). The best writers seem to me to expand one's capacity to imagine. And imagination, I believe, is something unique to the individual writer--and (importantly) to the reader of that writer. It is that very particular dialogue (a silent one, perhaps, on the part of the reader) and the louder discussion that arises out of that view on the part of many readers of a given writer that I think of as the study of literature. And, coincidentally, the variations in reader viewpoints, which accounts for the debate a discussion about great literature always engenders. I think there's a reason why that's so, and I think that reason has everything to do with some combination of the particular character and imagination of the author behind it. So, I don't fully understand the study of "text" as if it reveals nothing significant at all about the author who wrote it. Going back to the original question concerning when "literature" should be introduced, my thought is only that "literature," per se, may not benefit from being taught first (early on in life) as if "text" alone accounts for its significance, and only later revealed as something far more than that. The study of literature is unlike mathematics or science (even grammar and spelling), for example, which at their basic level have a more practical outcome--making change, comparing sizes, understanding how electricity works, being able to read anything at all, and so forth, while only an elite few may ever understand the elegance of a mathematical or scientific principle that applies to something most of the rest of us will never even comprehend at all (or have any reason to concern ourselves with). Literature, if appreciated by a young person as something with "meaning," "significance," and "beauty" first (as conveyed by a teacher whose enthusiasm for a given author, or several, is palpable) can, later on, be studied (by those with an interest) as "text" in order to see how that meaning, significance, and beauty arises from a given writer in comparison to others. So, I guess my thought is that there is no reason on earth not to infuse a young person's experience with great works of art (including, but not limited to literature), but also no reason to distance a young person's own discovery of meaning and significance and beauty by insisting upon some particular textual explanation before that meaning, beauty, and/or significance even has a chance to take hold.
You're certainly not alone in yur way of thinking (though the critical company you are keeping does tend to be rather dated). But the study of the text independent from the author still reveals a lot about human nature. Rather than reducing those universal ideas into autobiographical ones, though, separating the text from the author allows us to explore the universalities of the text free from the constraining biographical understandings of their authors. Studyng a text as an isolated and free-standing object does imply a certain formality, but it certainly doesn't limit one's ability to admire its beauty or understand its human concerns. Indeed, when you first beginto study literature, given your limited critical vocabulary its often all you can do to make broad comments about its meaning and beauty, with more sophisicated insights coming later on as your thinking about literature develops, and it is often at that earliest point that the author's biography is considered important. But whichever way you choose to look at it, it is a very complex issue, and one that has no "right" aswer, with huge amounts of criticism and theory supporting each side.
Very interesting. I think I'm seeing what you're saying. Do you think high school age kids are able to understand the critical language required to discuss texts in a meaningful way? That might be key to figuring out (at least) in what way the classics ought to be taught in high school (or maybe just "introduced" in some historical fashion, e.g., as an alternative). While not all students get turned off from literature in high school, an awful lot of them seem to; and I think I'd have to say that my own HS experience was not very productive along those lines. Now, I'm thinking that maybe my problem was not just coming from teachers who didn't seem to have any connection to the authors they "taught" or enthusiasm for the "stories" they required us to read. It could be because my few experiences were purely text-oriented and (therefore) absent the very context that might have launched my own interest much earlier on. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to comment about all this. I really appreciate it.
In terms of developing a critical vocabulary to analyse texts, I think it is something that is key to enjoying the texts. There's a common line people use about literature studies "dissecting" texts, which is a little off. Yes, you "cut up" the text to see how it works, but once you've cut up your frog its totally dead, whereas once you've dissected Shakespeare, its more alive than ever. And the sophistication with which you are able to carry out that dissection, I think, is proportional to your enjoyment of the text. As a banal example, consider Shakespeare, say, Edward's monologue from Act One of King Lear. Anyone who understands English would probably agree that the passage is a thing of beauty, and someone at the earliest stages of high school might talk about rhythm and metaphor, and by the end of high school I don't think its unreasonable to be able to explain how and why Iambic Pentameter, metaphor and metonymy all operate in the passage to make it function in the way it does, to give that idea of "beauty". So I think the study of the text as an object in itself is only really rewarding if you can commit to taking it apart and dismantling it. I think it can be frustrating to read something incredible and not understand it, or not be able to express your ideas about it, and perhaps this is why some kidsget turned off by things like Shakespeare or Dickens; these are not simple works by any standards, and yet kids are supposed to be able to understand them. I think the possitibility is there that some teachers might forget that their students don't have the expressive vocabulary that they themselves developed at university, and therefore aren't as sensitive to the subtleties of the texts as they are. However, I think the organistations that set the texts do a decent job of matching texts to abilities; there's a reason Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night are usually the first Shakespeare plays people study, while things like Lear come later. Its not that the texts are less sophisticated, its simply that its easier to talk about them with even a relatively small critical vocabulary.
