ABSTRACT
My aim is to affirm an arts approach to the teaching of literature. In this chapter I will concentrate on principles for the most part; in the next I will concentrate more on practice, and on one specific programme of work in relationship to creative writing. As with the earlier analysis of the concept of the arts as a generic community, so here I will begin with some historical excavation and then move towards more radical formulations for the future. I am out to establish an approach to the teaching of literature which actually fIts the nature of literature as an art form, a discipline of the imagination. I will begin with two highly influential approaches, now both more or less defunct, which have limited literature either to social themes (for discursive discussion) or sets of structures (for computation). I will conclude by placing the teaching of literature within the emerging arts paradigm and examine the consequences for the creative teaching of the subject.
The
