On Style

One pervasive problem with the way that literature is taught today, perhaps the pervasive problem, is the lack of any framework for understanding and evaluating it. Typically, a class at the high school or college level is assigned some reading, perhaps with some background about the book or author, but then the lecture period is little more than a book club facilitated by the instructor. Students are asked for their opinions about this or that aspect of the novel (or poem, play, whatever), but no definitive interpretation or means of assessing the quality of the work is given. In my time as a Literature major at college, there was really only one professor who did otherwise, and it was in his course on Shakespeare that I first encountered Aristotle’s Poetics (which we’ve discussed previously) and today’s author, Demetrius.