Reading and Responding to Poetry: To Know, to Experience

Bullock, Owen; McKnight, Lucinda; Todd, Ruby

doi:10.1177/1077800420935928

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…They were recruited by (or recruited, or both) the battle of good v evil that produced their readings of “The Road Not Taken” as a warning to stay on the straight and narrow by choosing the right, God-ordained path. Writing from Rosenblatt’s transactional theory perspective, Bullock et al (2021, p. 608) explain that “What we bring to the text obviously includes references to other similar or dissimilar texts”. The poem worked for these students by conjuring up another fork in the road – a biblical one with worldly and eternal implications.…”

Section: What Happened When Students First Plugged Into This Poem?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading with love: the potential of critical posthuman reading practices in preservice English education

Spector,

Murray

2023

ETPC

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Purpose Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism – particularly the practice of close reading – and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of which have been expanded through critical theorizing along the way. Elucidated by data produced in iterative experiments with Frost's “The Road Not Taken,” the authors reconceptualize the reader, the text, and close reading through the critical posthuman theory of reading with love as a generative way of thinking outside of the habitual practices of European humanisms. Design/methodology/approach In “thinking with” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2023) desiring-machines, affect, Man and critical posthuman theory, this post qualitative inquiry maps how the “The Road Not Taken” worked when students plugged into it iteratively in processes of reading with love, an affirmative and creative series of experiments with literature. Findings This study mapped how respect for authority, the battle of good v evil, individualism and meritocracy operated as desiring-machines that channeled most participants’ initial readings of “The Road Not Taken.” In subsequent experiments with the poem, the authors demonstrate that reading with love as a critical posthuman process of reading invites participants to exceed the logics of recognition and representation, add or invent additional ways of being and relating to the world and thereby produce the possibility to transform a world toward greater inclusivity and equity. Originality/value The authors reconceptualize the categories of “the reader” and “the text” from Rosenblatt’s transactional theory within practices of reading with love, which they situate within a critical posthuman theory. They eschew separating efferent and aesthetic reading stances while also recuperating practices of “close reading,” historically associated with the New Critics, by demonstrating the generativity of critically valenced “close reading” within a Deleuzian process of reading with love.

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Section: What Happened When Students First Plugged Into This Poem?mentioning

confidence: 99%