ABSTRACT
This chapter is an exploration of the act of interpreting a literary text. Guiding students to discover what a text means is the key element of literature classes. However, there is often the contrast between the meanings that students see in a text and what the teacher sees and expects. Therefore, the literature teacher straddles the balance between openness to student responses and maintaining a certain level of ‘correctness’. However, ‘correct’ ways of viewing a text can discourage students from loving literature. This chapter explores what meanings both students and teachers offer on a literary text to determine what commonalities between the two sides can be exploited to come to an empowering literature pedagogy, one that builds on the convergences of meanings from both sides.
