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Joyce's "The Dead"--teaching and critical theory.

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Abstract

Questions about the rightful place of critical theory in literature courses complicate teachers' decisions regarding theory in their classrooms. My experience of teaching Joyce's "The Dead" at three levels of undergraduate literary study suggests that this particular canonical short story offers guidance in making those decisions and helps instructors reach their pedagogical goals in the areas of literary history, genre, and theory.

Recent scholarship in the areas of critical theory, pedagogy, and literary studies queries the place of political approaches in the study of English yet suggests the unavailability of clear solutions for undergraduate teaching. The founding of the journals symploke: A Journal for the Intermingling of Literary, Theoretical and Cultural Scholarship and Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, as well as the continued success of the MLA's Approaches to Teaching Literature Series, Norton's Critical Editions, and perhaps most important for my discussion, the Bedford Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism Series, imply that theories and pedagogies that focus on political and historical issues not only have not exhausted themselves but are indeed here to stay. In contrast, however, recent texts such as Gary Day's The British Critical Tradition: A Re-evaluation and Eugene Goodheart's Does Literary Studies Have a Future intimate that the time has arrived to interrogate the rightful place for theoretical approaches in the study of literature. Further complicating the matter is Jean Rabate's comment during a conversation on his

The Future of Theory, that

One of these days, I will teach a class on Theory using only non-canonical books. No Derrida, no Lacan, no De Man, no Butler, no Bhabba. Just Protagoras, Democritus, Rabelais, Balzac, Bruno, Vico, Coleridge, Carlyle, Borges, and a few others.

However, Rabate's rather exclusive list immediately raises questions/objections--No women? No non-westerners? No American people of color?

My paper examines the issue of whether or not the validity of political approaches is the right question. Grounding my discussion in my pedagogical approaches to James Joyce's "The Dead," the last story in his 1914 collection Dubliners, I trace my teaching of this work in three English courses that differ in scope, intensity, and depth and breadth of study--a sophomore level survey course in British literature, a junior level course in the short story, and a junior/senior level course in critical theory for English majors and minors--and conclude that a more valid question might be, what is my responsibility as far as the goals of the students are concerned? In other words, how can I best help them achieve their goals through a judicious offering of formal questions and poststructural literary theories?

My department offers and students take the three aforementioned courses for different reasons. The sophomore level British literature survey draw...

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