Writing About Literature

Many English professors prefer their students to read a text and write about that text only. For example, students read a Shakespearean sonnet, then spend several paragraphs describing what they think Shakespeare was trying to say. This is one way to teach writing about literature, and it is not a bad way. But I prefer to teach literature more comparatively: I tend to give topics that ask students not only to interpret what the text is saying, but also ask the students to compare parts of the text to their own lives and their own beliefs.

For example, I am a huge fan of the Japanese author Matsuo Bashō, and when I taught World Literature, I taught a piece of his called The Narrow Road of the Interior. Now, this is a wonderful piece, but it can seem a bit flat and dull for the average modern American English speaker/student. It is a seventeenth-century travelogue dotted with Bashō’s famous haikus, and there are lot of temples, trees, temples, trees, flower blossoms, and temples with a pissing horse to spice things up a bit. So it order for both Bashō and the haiku form to come alive to students, I assigned the following essay topic:

Travel narratives like Bashō’s have been popular throughout most of human history because they allow people to experience parts of the world that they cannot experience in reality. Write about a trip or event that you found life-changing in some large or small way. This trip can be literal (going to Nebraska) or figurative (having a baby). Include at least two haikus to illustrate, as Bashō did. Remember a haiku is composed of three lines: line one has 5 syllables; line two has 7 syllables; and line three has 5 syllables. For example:

Can you write deftly?

Then by all means show me the

Money, my student.

Students absolutely loved this topic, because we have all been on many important trips, both literal and figurative. I received wonderful descriptive essays of life, birth, and everything in between with unbelievably unique haikus. My personal favorite was from a mother writing about her daughter. Her little girl had been born with an undiagnosed form of autism, and finding out what was wrong with her daughter and protecting her daughter from cruel children and unresponsive teachers and doctors had been a sad and rocky journey. And yet she loved that child so much that the journey had been worthwhile.

Again, I prefer to have students write about literature in a way that makes the author and his work seem more real to them. And what makes something more real that drawing a parallel between it and your own life?

For more about my current English instruction at Lingua Espresso, go to www.linguaespresso.com.