I’m going to play skeptic with this blog post. I find myself rather persuaded by the Elbow piece. I’m with you, Elbow. You convince me. You sound pretty dang smart. Writing that mimics music? Yes. Sentences with expectations? Check? Momentary frustrations? Check. Subtle repetitions? You betcha. Elicit some reader resistance? Huzzah. Creating tension as we build toward relief? Amen.
I admit to getting excited reading the article. I want to go out and create some itch in my critical theory seminar paper…
But…what are the practical methodologies for teaching expectations and frustrations, the non-satisfactions, half-satisfactions, and temporal satisfactions, the itches and scratches? How do you teach someone to toy with reader expectations in an effective manner? I mean, are my students really interested in yearning and relief? Can I get them to yearn with their sentences? Hardly. Do you yearn for anything—let alone ideas and concepts and sentences—at eighteen? Yearn, people. Yearn. Hell, I’m not even sure I’m interested in yearning and relief when it comes to academic writing much of the time (note to self…). To be honest, much of this feels unteachable in the sense that you glean these rhetorical strategies from exhaustive reading of other writers. It seems more a process of internalization rather than instruction. I’m not sure how successful I can be teaching yearning and relief in the comp classroom. Please feel free to enlighten me. I yearn for your responses.
I have the same questions about teaching "yearning" that you do, Ryan. How am I supposed to explain the HOW part of this to students? I'm not even sure how to explain it to myself. I would just say, "read these essays. Here are some examples of Yearning and Itching and Expectations." I wouldn't know how to explain to someone how to produce such effects in their own writing. I could tell them when they've achieved it, in my view, but HOW to DO it ??? Another point to consider is that I don't think many first-years have mastered even explaining their theses clearly in a paper. Establishing a sense of yearning just seems too fancy for such an early stage in the development of writing skills.
ReplyDeleteRyan, agreed. I think it is probably way over their heads.
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