Literature vs. Composition

            Reading Elbow’s essay, “The Cultures of Literature and Composition,” brought up a lot of conflicting feelings in me. He starts off by saying that there is a conflicted relationship between literature and composition, one that I have, apparently, been unaware of for the past 17+ years I’ve been in the educational system. I’m not saying that his claims are untrue. I don’t work within an English department, so I can’t make any claims on how people act toward literature and composition. I suppose in my undergrad, especially as I got into my higher division courses, I never made a distinction in my head between literature and composition; it was inevitable that I would be writing in a literature class, and the times I took creative writing courses, we still read (though whether it would be considered “classic literature” could be debatable). I suppose that’s why I became and English major; I love to read, I love to write, and this is the place where those two things come together. I knew that no matter what class I took in English, I would be reading and writing. Even though at the end of part one, he does list out what he wants each section of English to learn from the other, I did feel that he was one setting me up to believe that composition teachers are better than literature teachers because the composition teachers aren’t as snooty. He was the one introducing the bias to me, someone who was unaware the battle existed between the two.

            One of the problems I had with Elbow is that he did not clearly explain what he meant by “composition.” It sounds silly to say that I needed this explained, but up until the third page, I believed he was referring to composition as any student writing, including essays and academic prose. However, I reached a point where it became evident that, when he says composition, he is only talking about creative, imaginary works.  Even with the distinction made that composition means creative work, I still don’t see how Elbow can make the statement that “the literary tradition neglect the teaching of the imaginative writing , it also neglects teaching us to read in such a way as to help bring powerful imaginative texts most palpably into our lives” (470). He talks about literature as if every person in the entire world teaches it in the same way. I disagree completely. I’ve personally had teachers that go out of their way to make sure students see connections between what we’re reading and our lives. I’ve had teachers ask us for our reading of a text and then ask us to go back again and read it “against the grain” so that we can understand a different argument or a different point of view. Just because you’re reading literature does not mean there is no creativity going on. Critical ideas can be creative and imaginative, I feel like he is overlooking that.

            It’s no surprise that his statement of a dissenting voice in his own head at the start of part two is exactly what I was thinking of him by this point in the article: “‘But your only use for literature is in fact to use it- for personal therapy. You want everything to be utilitarian and pragmatic . You’re just a cornball” (472). He goes on to say that his problem with the sophistication of literature is that it breeds snobbery, but if I’m to read him as a composition teacher, I find him incredibly snobby as well. Elbow does say that he feels that “training in literary study is not just learning knowledge and skills but learning to stop being ‘ordinary’ or ‘regular’ and instead be more sophisticated and even oblique” (473). I think a lot of people would jump on his band-wagon, and I will say that I’ve met people in this area of study who do believe that, but as far as I’m concerned, every field of study lends to this perception, whether in English or not. Every form of higher education is a stepping stone to becoming somehow “more” than you were, and possibly “more” than the other applicant you’re up against in the job market. Is that not why such a significant number of people attend college?

            Ultimately, I disagree with Elbow’s article, not because it is badly written or inaccessible. In fact, it is the opposite; he writes well, and I never found myself struggling to get through overly theoretical language. I disagree with him because I see literature and composition, whatever form you wish to view composition, as one in the same. The field of English is a cycle: we read creative work of others, we discuss it, we learn how to develop creative ideas (though they may be creative-critical ideas), we write them down, and now we have creative ideas for others to read. This will continue as long as people are excited about text and literature, and I don’t think there should be a line drawn in the sand and someone saying “Composition people over here, literature people over here.” 

Faigley's "Judging Writing, Judging Selves"

Lester Faigley’s article brings up the ever debated question: what is good writing? I’m sure all of us have different examples of our personal writing that we could hold up as good, perhaps because it received an A or because it was praised by someone we respect. For me, Faigley raises some interesting points about the subjectivity of grading. Of course, I can’t say that this is any kind of ground-breaking information; the biggest joke I make with my friends from undergrad is that all I have to do in a paper is make something up and then find a smart way to say it. However, even with the off-hand way I tend to approach papers now that I’ve gotten so used to writing them, there is some truth to my joke. There is an elitism around academic writing, which Faigley shows in the section of his article where he talks about the Commission on English who wrote Examining the Examination in English.

First of all, the whole idea of standardized tests makes me roll my eyes. Basing everything that a student knows off of high stress, timed test that is also centered on how the test taker is feeling that day is a pretty horrible way of measuring aptitude. To Faigley’s credit, he also seems to abhor the system that is standardized tests, or at least the particular test that was used to examine English in the 1920’s. He uses two sample essays to illustrate his point on the subjectivity of grading. The graders of the exam used a scale based on the following:

[a] writer of an examination book marked 50 (“failure”)…[a] Candidate who calls just short of showing the minimum ability, together with a faulty technique indicating that he would be a ‘bad risk’…The writer of a book marked 85 (“very good”) is described as showing “good all round ability that falls just short of excellence (90 group) (5).

When I read the samples Faigley provided, I have to say I agree that the grade of the first paper should be lower than the grade of the second paper, however to award a failing grade to the first sample simply because “the great works have not had the right effect; if they had, the writer wouldn’t waste his time on popular literature” (8). The official reason given for failing this paper is that the texts the writer quoted did nothing to support an argument that the writer learned or felt anything from what he read, and that reason is one I can understand and agree with, but when you look at the fact that the second essay cites Hamlet and Macbeth, texts considered much more “high brow” than things quoted by the first writer, it becomes a lot clearer why the first essay failed with the second one received an 85.

            I was bothered that the first essay was flat out failed, but what bothered me more was the fact that Faigley says that because of the grade the student received “he was not admitted to a prestigious college” (9). I think it’s pretty horrible that because a group of people were less than impressed with the selection of literature that the first boy chose to use. Also, the fact that you either fail or pass the exam is ridiculous in and of itself.

            Moving away from the examination grading, Faigley goes into how some professors seem to think that personal narrative writing automatically makes for good writing. I agree with Faigley when he says he has “read narratives written for large-scale writing assessments that deal with intense personal events…yet the writer had no knowledge of who would read the paper or what would become of it” (12). I took a non-fiction writing workshop in undergrad and at the end of the class, everyone had to write a personal story and the entire class read it and critiqued it, so I can speak from experience that just because writing is personal does not make the writing good.

            I suppose the main purpose of the article is focused on the self in writing and how to teach what the self is and what exactly the self is in writing. The article speaks to the theory that “the idea of the individual self is uniquely Western…[because] In European languages the fact that ‘I’…refers indexically to the speaker of the utterance suggests that the speaker possesses an autonomous consciousness and at the same time is aware of that consciousness” (396-397). However, I don’t feel that Faigley ever answered what self in writing is, though he does raise the question “how exactly [do] teachers give students power. Is it in self-expression or is it in earning power” (410). I don’t think that he ever really answered this question, though he says that “teachers of college writing are still very concerned with self” (401). This is all well and good, but I wish I understood more of what Faigley was trying to get at with the self in writing. He never answered all his questions, so I was wondering exactly how to teach students to put themselves in their writing.