Reading Without Lines. Transformations of Literary Texts in Textbooks
While textbooks and teaching materials within the high-school subject of Swedish have been the focus of several studies, the transformations that literary works undergo as they are incorporated into teaching materials warrant further consideration.
Research has shown that the subject of Swedish in schools has been subject to fragmentation as its scope has expanded. Such fragmentation has also been shown to affect the way learning materials such as textbooks and anthologies present literary works to pupils. This article considers the textual transformations that literary texts undergo in their transition from originals to textbook material, with a particular emphasis on processes such as remediation, fragmentation, exclusion and hybridization. What kind of text are pupils in schools actually reading when they open their textbooks? What is the relationship between the original literary work and the excerpt commonly found in textbooks and anthologies? While empirical studies of classroom situations have yielded considerable insight into learning processes, as well as literacy and reading, this study focuses on the text itself by describing and theorizing the implications of textual transformations for the study of literature.
Through an analysis of literary works from three different schoolbooks in the subject of Swedish for year 7, 8, and 9, the article illustrates and problematizes various aspects of textual transformations as it relates to the curriculum, Lgr 11.
While The Grapes of Wrath highlights specific social and institutional structures that direct the course of action of its main characters, shifting the analysis from structure to agency opens up the novel to new readings. This article considers how Steinbeck's novel problematizes agency and argues that it troubles distinctions between human agency and nonhuman agency. Traditional novels generally rely on the actions of their characters, but in The Grapes of Wrath such action is repeatedly thwarted or fails to lead to the desired outcome. Instead, the characters are acted on through various machines or chains of actors that lead back to a vague and bodiless entity, such as the monster-bank. The novel's emphasis on the tractor, the automobile, the handbill, and the bank provides the basis for my reading, together with more subtle instantiations of material agency as seen in the phonograph, the slot machine, the kerosene, and the sticker displayed on the red truck. Agency has traditionally rested on the notion of free will and intention, but recent theories, such as actor-network-theory, or ANT, highlight material agency and move beyond the subject in favor of networks and distribution of agency. This article uses theories on agency to reread Steinbeck's classic novel, but also attempts to show how Steinbeck's novel can increase our understanding of the concept of agency more broadly.
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