I have written about a series of metacognitions for English Literature that attempt to view the discipline in a way that makes the entire field more accessible. One concept is that of genealogy – the idea that all stories are inherently related backwards to earlier stories. This fundamentally means that at the core of all stories is the same foundational DNA; stories all look and feel the same as one another.
We can see the concept of ‘tradition’ or ‘structuralism’ through any class text, and The Magician’s Nephew, by C.S. Lewis makes a good example. A learning objective might start out as the analysis of character arcs, transformation and anthropomorphism to express personal responsibility. To ensure this is aligned with the principles of Literature, rather than being a subjective interpretation (which is difficult to validate, and then also difficult to assess and grade), we want to align this objective with some disciplinary principles.
Firstly, we can discuss how all Literature can be seen as merely a re-telling of the same story. Literature can be conceptualised as a singular structure, not a plurality of texts. One of the key themes that all Literature engages with is that of Transformation, as per the objective of this lesson. The students and I discussed their own favourite texts (be it film or novel) and how the characters in those texts were not able to resolve some dilemma or disruption until they themselves had undergone some transformation of personhood. We talked about Deathnote, Percy Jackon, a Minion’s Movie… The more examples we discussed, the more they could see the repetition of transformation. I add to their list, the GCSE texts they will come to know in future; A Christmas Carol, An Inspector Calls, Macbeth and some of the poetry too (though this is much more abstract).
We then discussed some facets of transformation; characters do not simply ‘engage transformation mode’ like a power ranger or a butterfly, but must undergo some journey with checkpoints and ‘XP’ (even in computer games, the final resolution cannot be obtained without grinding some XP first – there are some video games that allow you to engage the final boss right at the start of the game, but to do so would be ridiculous as the main character must be transformed through XP before the final boss can realistically be defeated (see The Legend Of Zelda, Dark Souls or Fall Out games)). The journey generally requires some object-of-power (which I refer to as the Macguffin), helper or prophetic characters, and an antagonist who motivates the need for transformation. For example, we discussed Thor and his transformation from belligerent god-complex to a much more humble and fallible character. The item of power that helps in his transformation is the love he receives from Jane, without which he would be irredeemable. He is supported in this transformation by Jane herself, and other characters such as the Avengers or The Warriors Three. He is antagonised into transformation by various ‘bad guys’ from different films. Ultimately, this structure of Literature is a highly stable and unchanging framework across most literary works, genres and forms – its presence is a key indicator that what we are looking at is literary.
Students were then not tasked with recalling and learning The Magician’s Nephew, but in using TMN as illustrative of the structure within Literature – a subtle difference. The task became to select characters that undergo transformation, work out what is antagonising them to transform, who and what is needed for this to be a success. In this lesson sequence, students are learning a disciplinary body of knowledge that cannot be known simply by reading the text. They are synthesising this methodological knowledge with evidence from the novel we are reading. If the methodological / disciplinary knowledge changes the way they ‘read’ the material / novel, then it can be said they are acting critically or analytically. TMN is no longer just a fairytale to enjoy, but a continuation of a literary tradition that exemplifies a key underlying structure of Literature that was established at the very beginning of story telling.
This could also be referred to as an anthropological view of literature, a la Jean Claude Levi Strauss, or the force of tradition, a la Rick Rylance. What anthropology finds is that the structures constructed in a cultures first attempts of literature are not replaced by new structures, but persist as a continual (even if faded) layer of the text.
The outcome in thinking of Literature as a singular item, is that students only need to learn that one story, and witness how authors merely dress this structure in different robes; the characters, the places, the events change from text to text, but the functions and structures do not.
When a lesson teaches the structural singularity of texts, the objective becomes mandatory because it is how we read future texts. No future unit of work will require that they recall the name that Strawberry was given, nor the journey or quotes… But every unit of literature will require the recognition of the underlying structures of stories.
DisciplineOfEnglish has been structured with this in mind. It presents a set of learning objectives which are text-agnostic, fixed packages of knowledge.
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