Freud asking whether psychoanalysis could be taught in the university, and then whether it could be learned, provides an occasion for asking about the emotional uses of theory. The paper draws from literature, clinical writing and pedagogy to build a psychoanalytic discussion of teaching and learning that takes seriously phantasies of knowledge…

In this review essay, Jeanne Connell examines the influence of pragmatic philosophy on the scholarly works of twentieth-century literary theorist and English educator Louise Rosenblatt through the lens of a recent collection of her essays originally published between 1936 and 1999. Rosenblatt grounded her transactional theory of literature in…

Literary criticism and composition theory can be parts of one homogeneous discipline of English, since they are becoming more closely related in current theory and practice. (DD)

Poetry ought to be taught as being sensitive, decreative, prophetic, speculative, expressive, irreducible, open-ended, and a teller of dark tales. (DD)

Argues that revisionist and ecological criticism are two different activities. Describes the differences, then proposes ecological approaches for the study of literature, rhetoric, and composition. (FL)

This study related selected principles of rhetorical analysis to teaching as it actually occurs in the classroom. The Aristotelian definition of rhetoric as the means of discovering all the available means of persuasion is central to teaching, in that the entire endeavor of education rests upon the premise that children, as they grow, need and…

Discusses characteristics of poststructuralism, and describes some applications of poststructural theory in the English classroom. Argues that a poststructuralist pedagogy need not neglect traditional terminology and traditional close reading of texts. (RS)

Six points appear prominently in modern theory of composition: theory basks in the shadow of literary criticism and scholarship; writing is an act involving creativity, of which theory should take account; creativity depends upon the primacy of personal insight, which is also the basis of intellectual development; the grapholect of standard edited…

Poses the theory that Yeats' poems can be viewed as a "book" that tells a story, the narrating persona being a fictive projection of Yeats the poet. (JC)

Describes how Bakhtin's insights can heighten the reader's ability to experience verbal and written expression in a rich and complex way, thus serving as an anecdote to a simplified, exclusive concern with purely formal aspects of writing instruction. (EL)

Explores the tenets of both the New Criticism and reader response criticism, and concludes that there is a need for a new imperative in criticism that conceives literary understanding in terms of a communication process in which both text and reader are granted importance. (FL)

Explores the possibility that literary theorists and reading researchers are unconscious of each others interests, goals, and assumptions. Seeks to explore how the gaps between these two areas might best be bridged. (EL)

Discusses poststructuralism in the classroom--the use of contemporary literary theory in teaching undergraduates, as well as some of its consequences. (AEA)

Notes that the problem facing educators now is to make a single educational system from several isolated activities while at the same time creating a general theory of discourse that will include them all. Proposes a curriculum to solve that problem. (FL)

Responds to Richard Ekman's criticism of poststructuralism and discusses three strands of a poststructuralist English curriculum. (EL)