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Teaching K. A. Porter''s "That Tree".

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Susan Lanser's poetics of point of view provides sound basis for the unveiling of the deeper layers of significance embedded behind the formal properties of a literary text. By applying her theory to the analysis of Porter's "That Tree", this article alms to yield a practical example of its enlightening use in the classroom.

1. Introduction

In overt opposition to the separation between form and content characteristic of the Aristotelian tradition, theorists such as Wallace Martin (1986), Susan Lanser (1981, 1992) or James Phelan (1996) among others have vindicated their interrelation. Martin asserts that "technique is not simply an auxiliary aspect of narration, a necessary encumbrance that writers must use to convey meaning, but rather that the method creates the possibility of meaning" (1986: 132). Likewise, Susan Lanser states that "aesthetic structure, like all content, is constrained and determined by ideology" (1981: 100) and James Phelan speaks of narrative technique "as a distinctive and powerful means for an author to communicate knowledge, feelings, values and beliefs to an audience" (1996: 18). Such assumptions are the basis for my practices as a teacher of English Rhetoric and Poetics since they underline the relevance of the study of the formal properties of literary texts for their critical interpretation.

I believe that literature should be understood as a communicative process between writer and reader since the former intends, by different means, to persuade the latter to share the perceptual and ideological vision of the world he or she has portrayed. Thus, an elaborate articulation of the author's textual persona clearly contributes to moulding the reader's interpretation of the story. As a consequence, the study of the narrator's point of view becomes a pivotal issue for the exegesis of literary texts as "[point of view] articulates the relationship of the text to ideology itself" (Goode 1976: 218). Ideology is to be understood here as "a socially and politically dominant set of values and beliefs which are not 'out there' but are constructed in the text especially in and through language" (Carter & Nash 1990: 21). Hence, the (real) author's linguistic textual choices clearly contribute to unveil the narrator's ideological stance and to determine the reader's final interpretation. Accordingly, as a teacher of English Rhetoric and Poetics, I try to provide my students with the most adequate tools to undertake the arduous task of a successful reconstruction of the text and, in my opinion, Lanser's theoretical framework serves those purposes. In The Narrative Act (1981) she combines speech-act theory and point-of-view criticism and, despite its formalist heritage, her poetics of point of view presents the necessary theoretical background with which to explore the narrator's "ideological and psychological attitudes toward a given 'content'" (1981: 93). It...

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