Paula Marantz Cohen muses:
What makes great literature “great” is that cannot be reduced to a formula or a simple answer; it cannot be used up. This is a lesson that students need to learn in our sound-byte culture. When they talk freely about great literature, their ideas take new and exciting form, and they begin to discover who they are.
The buzzword in education circles is that literary analysis teaches critical thinking. But this always struck me as a limited and rather condescending way of thinking about literary talk. Yes, literary analysis teaches critical thinking, but it also allows students to grapple with important topics that they might not normally discuss, and to apply the complex themes and structures that literature raises to their own lives.
I have been told that my classroom sometimes resembles a group therapy session. I take this as a compliment. When students talk seriously about a great literary text this leads, inevitably, to their talking about themselves. Sometimes they can get very deep into the latter, though they always have the former near at hand to ground them.
The Dish 