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Here's a general discussion topic & request
for feedback:

I've recently signed a contract with Broadview press
to bring out a text on "Writing About Literature: Prose
Fiction."  It's part of the press' new "writing in the
disciplines" series--one designed to give undergraduate
readers "insider knowledge" re: writing in various areas.

In my proposal I noted that, unlike creative writing
courses, where students read examples of
fine poetry or prose fiction as models to be emulated,
literature courses ask students to spend most of their
time studying forms they will never be asked to write.
My text proposes a teaching/studying aid--a cross between
a rhetoric & a casebook (Stephen Crane's wonderful
short story "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" will be
included in the text, & most advice on composition &
critical approaches will reference "Yellow sky").

Anyway, here's my question:  why, to date, has so little
been written about the rhetoric of literary essays?  I'm
aware of Fahnestock and Secor's provocative piece, "The
Rhetoric of Literary Criticism," but there seems little
substantive (pedagogical) work in this area.  I'll be
looking, for example, at the relationship between
first-year critical essays & their professional counterparts,
& considering what students might learn by via a rhetorical
analysis of professional models & methods & institutional
contexts.

I'm also interested in what CASLL members might like to see
in such a text.  Where might the sort of standard resource
(I'm thinking of books by Griffith, Barnet, and Roberts) be
improved?  Do others see potential (as I do) in using
contemporary rhetoric & composition theory to explain, interpret,
& teach students how to write essays about literature?

Feel free to reply on or off list.   My email address
is   [log in to unmask]

Regards,  Will

                      < < W.F. Garrett-Petts > >

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