I told my undergraduate course to come up with the most extravagant and impossible interpretations of two Cortázar stories, "Continuidad de los parques" and "Axolotl."
I did the same thing, in my grade course, with Neruda's "Oda al tomate."
A funny thing happened: their readings were actually pretty good. They started really discussing the texts without fear of being wrong.
2 comments:
These wild interpretations are all I can get. Of course, I am now prohibited from teaching these stories because they are too unsettling (they play with time and order of narrative, which upsets students). But when I did teach them I would NOT let them come up with outrageous readings because they then didn't read the stories. Everything I do has to be designed to get them close to the text, very close to the text, because otherwise they can avoid reading and imagine something else and say it was just their interpretation. Which is not true. It is not a "reading" because they did not read.
Today in class we sat and read aloud, and I explained what I was reading to them and showing where it was on the page, and talking about the context. I was channeling my 5th grade teacher. I had expected them to read the introduction and the text and not need these explanations, but speak at a higher level. However, they had not been able to do it, and they were not faking.
Yes. I can see that side of it too. In my case we had already done a kind of standard reading of the stories, first understanding the plot itself, then discussing implications that were explicitly signaled by the text. The extravagant readings were the conclusion to the discussion. I've had problems with students only coming up with outlandish things too.
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