Appleman Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of Critical Encounters was another mild disappointment. In this chapter the author tries to demonstrate the effectiveness of literary theory in practice within the classroom by giving us four short vignettes of different classroom settings and literary theory applications within those classrooms. Appleman accomplishes what she intended with this chapter - showing her readers examples of how literary theories can improve the English classroom climate - I am just skeptical on the importance of vignettes. I have never really appreciated personal experience stories as much as some other people seem to, so that probably influenced my opinion of the chapter to a certain degree. It was, I'll admit, annoying interesting to read about the "Star Wars" activity. My nickname (please don't spread this secret too far) is 'Yoda' and I'm admittedly one of the biggest "Star Wars" dorks you'll ever encounter. For this reason I was slightly more interested in that particular vignette than the other ones. I know that we all tend to scoff at the idea of showing a movie several days in a row in an English classroom (especially an advanced English classroom) but I would argue that watching any popular movie and allowing the students to analyze that movie through the lens of a particular literary theory (especially if your activities are as prepared as the one Appleman provides) could help them to realize the impact that viewing a story through different theories can have on your interpretation of that story. One benefit that film has over paper is its ability to tell a larger group of people the same story in a decidedly shorter amount of time. Since all of the students are guaranteed to have seen the same story, you can better explore the various interpretive conclusions that they came to. The point is to invite many literary theories into your classroom so that students will "[n]o longer... respond within a preselected theoretical paradigm. They [will] construct the theoretical context as well as the content of their meaning making" (page 21).