Retracing Rosenblatt: "A Textual Archaeology"

• Published in: Research in the teaching of English 2001-08, Vol.36 (1), p.110-145
• Main Authors: Dressman, Mark, Webster, Joan Parker
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Archaeology; College Students; Content Analysis; Cultural Pluralism; Data collection; Editing; English Instruction; Grammatical number; Graphemes; Higher Education; Literacy; Literary criticism; Literature; New criticism; Pedagogy; Poetry; Prose; Reader response theory; Readers; Reading; Reading instruction; Rosenblatt (Louise); Social Environment; Structuralism; Syntactic complexity; Teachers; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Text Structure; Textual criticism; Titles; Tone
• ISSN: 0034-527X; 1943-2348
• DOI: 10.58680/rte20011740

In this archaeological investigation of the work of Louise Rosenblatt, we read and highlighted all text-level differences between the 1st (1938) and 5th (1995) editions of Literature as Exploration. We categorized each type of revision, traced a sample of each to the edition in which the change was made, and then extended our analysis to 70 passages that were chosen at random from the first edition and compared to revisions, deletions, or additions to the 5th edition of the book. Beyond stylistic revisions our analysis suggested a shift in Rosenblatts persona from 1st-person colleague to 3rd-person critic or expert; a substitution of the term transactions for interaction without extended explanation or revision; a reduction of the agency of authors and teachers; reductions in the description of the social context in which literary experiences occur and in the mention of literatures ideological function; and separations of the practical from the literary and of social scientific from literary understanding. To account for these changes, we considered the sociohistorical context in which Rosenblatt has worked and speculate that they were the result of a combination of factors such as editorial updating, changes in authorial purpose and influence on Rosenblatt's thinking, and a fundamental difference between Rosenblatt's understanding of the term transaction and the way in which the term was used by her primary theoretical influence, John Dewey. We conclude with a consideration of the implications of Rosenblatt's legacy for literature education in an increasingly pluralistic world.