Areas of Exploration

Readers, writers and texts

Works are chosen from a variety of literary forms. The study of the works could focus on the relationships between literary texts, readers and writers as well as the nature of literature and its study. This study includes the investigation of the response of readers and the ways in which literary texts generate meaning. The focus is on the development of personal and critical responses to the particulars of literary texts.

Just as the reader participates in the production of the text’s meaning so the text shapes the reader.

This area of exploration introduces students to the nature of literature and its study. The investigation students will undertake involves close attention to the details of texts in a variety of literary forms to learn about the choices made by authors and the ways in which meaning is created. At the same time, study will focus on the role readers themselves play in generating meaning as students move from a personal response to an understanding and interpretation that is influenced by the community of readers of which they are a part. Their interaction with other readers will raise an awareness of the constructed and negotiated nature of meaning.

Students will learn to understand the aesthetic nature of literature and come to see that literary texts are powerful means to express individual thoughts and feelings, and that their own perspectives as experienced readers are integral to the effect of a literary text.

Study in this area should be structured to allow students to become more confident in their ability to recognize key textual features and how they create or affect meaning. Works can be chosen which lend themselves to close reading and give students a sense of elements across a variety of literary forms. The aim is not to enumerate or define various features, but to study them beyond the identification of elements or the consideration of individual effects to see the complex constructed nature of literary texts. While conducting detailed study, learning activities can be structured to introduce students to the ways in which literary professionals attend to texts and their concerns. Student writing and response can involve moving back and forth between personal and academic response or between the creative and the expository.

The area of exploration of readers, writers and texts aims to introduce students to the skills and approaches required to closely examine literary texts as well as to introduce metacognitive awareness of the nature of the discipline by considering the following guiding conceptual questions.

• Why and how do we study literature?

• How are we affected by literary texts in various ways?

• In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated, expressed and interpreted?

• How does language use vary among literary forms?

• How does the structure or style of a literary text affect meaning?

• How do literary texts offer insights and challenges?

Possible links to TOK

Links to TOK in this area revolve around the questions of what kind of knowledge can be constructed from a literary text, how that knowledge is constructed and the extent to which the meaning of a literary text can be considered fixed. Here are examples of links to TOK arising from this area of exploration:

• What do we learn about through literature? What role does literature fulfill? What is its purpose?

• In what ways is the kind of knowledge we gain from literature different from the kind we gain through the study of other disciplines? How certain can we be of the knowledge constructed through reading literary texts?

• How much of the knowledge we construct through reading a literary text is determined by the writer’s intention, the reader’s cultural assumption and by the purpose valued for the text in a community of readers?

• Are some interpretations of a literary text better than others? How are multiple interpretations best negotiated?

• What constitutes good evidence in explaining a response to literature?

Time and space

Works are chosen to reflect a range of historical and/or cultural perspectives. Their study focuses on the contexts of literary texts and the variety of ways literary texts might both reflect and shape society at large. The focus is on the consideration of personal and cultural perspectives, the development of broader perspectives, and an awareness of the ways in which context is tied to meaning.

The ultimate boundary of world literature is found in the interplay of works in a reader’s mind, reshaped anew whenever a reader picks up one book in place of another, begins to read, and is drawn irresistibly into a new world. -David Damrosch (2009a)

This area of exploration focuses on the idea that literary texts are neither created nor received in a vacuum. It explores the variety of cultural contexts in which literary texts are written and read across time and space as well as the ways literature itself—in its content—mirrors the world at large. Students will examine how cultural conditions can shape the production of a literary text, how a literary text can reflect or refract cultural conditions, and the ways culture and identity influence reception.

Students will investigate ways in which literary texts may represent and be understood from a variety of cultural and historical perspectives. Through their exploration, students will be able to recognize the role of relationships among text, self and other, and the ways in which the local and the global connect. These relationships are complex and dynamic. The background of an author and the make-up of an audience are not necessarily clear or easily described. Literary texts are situated in specific contexts and deal with or represent social, political and cultural concerns particular to a given time and place. For example, a work written to address the concerns of an author in contemporary society can be set in ancient times. Cultures that are geographically separated can share mores or ideas, while people living in proximity can embrace disparate traditions. Students will consider the intricacies of communication within such a complex societal framework and the implications that language and text take on when produced and read in shifting contexts.

Study and work selection in this area should allow students to explore texts and issues from a variety of places, cultures and/or times. The culture, biography of an author, historical events or narratives of critical reception will be considered and may be researched, but the focus of study will be on the ideas and issues raised by the literary texts themselves and a consideration of whether these are best understood in relation to an informed consideration of context. In this area of exploration, students examine the ways in which a literary text may illuminate some aspect of the political or social environment, or the ways in which a more nuanced understanding of events may affect their understanding or interpretation of a literary text. The study of contexts does not imply a static, one-to-one relationship between a literary text and the world, but sees the former as a powerful “non-human actor” across time and space.

Time and space aims to broaden student understanding of the open, plural, or cosmopolitan nature of literary texts by considering the following guiding conceptual questions.

• How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of a literary text?

• How do we approach literary texts from different times and cultures to our own?

• To what extent do literary texts offer insight into another culture?

• How does the meaning and impact of a literary text change over time?

• How do literary texts reflect, represent or form a part of cultural practices?

• How does language represent social distinctions and identities?

Possible links to TOK

Links to TOK in this area are related to the questions of how far the context of production of a literary text influences or informs its meaning and the extent to which the knowledge a reader can obtain from a literary text is determined by the context of reception. Here are examples of links to TOK arising from this area of exploration:

• How far can a reader understand a literary text that was written in a context different from his or her own?

• To what extent is it necessary to share a writer’s outlook to be able to understand his or her work?

• What is lost in translation from one language to another?

• How might the approaches to a given time and place of a poet, a playwright or a novelist and a historian differ?

• Is the notion of a canon helpful in the study and understanding of literature? How does a canon get established? What factors influence its expansion or change over time?

Intertextuality: connecting texts

Works are chosen so as to provide students with an opportunity to extend their study and make fruitful comparisons. Their study focuses on intertextual relationships between literary texts with possibilities to explore various topics, thematic concerns, generic conventions, literary forms or literary traditions that have been introduced throughout the course. The focus is on the development of critical response grounded in an understanding of the complex relationships among literary texts.

Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations: any text is the absorption and transformation of another. - Julia Kristeva (1980)

This area of exploration focuses on intertextual concerns or the connections between and among diverse literary texts, traditions, creators and ideas. It focuses on the comparative study of literary texts so that students may gain deeper appreciation of both unique characteristics of individual literary texts and complex systems of connection. Throughout the course, students will be able to see similarities and differences among literary texts. This area allows for a further exploration of literary concerns, examples, interpretations and readings by studying a grouping of works set by the teacher or set in close conversation with a class or groups of students. Students will gain an awareness of how texts can provide critical lenses to reading other texts and of how they can support a text's interpretation by expanding on it or question it by providing a different point of view.

Intertextuality: connecting texts can be approached in a variety of ways, such as through:

• the study of a group of works from the same literary form (for example, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama)

• the study of sub-categories within that literary form (for example, the novel, comedy, the sonnet, the essay)

• an exploration of a topic as represented across literary texts (for example, power, heroism, gender)

• a study of the way different texts address one same concept (for example, representation, identity, culture)

• an analysis of how allusions by one literary text to another affect the meaning of both of them (for example, explicit intertextual references from an author to another author’s work)

• a theoretical literary investigation (such as literary value or critical perspective).

This area of exploration aims to give students a sense of the ways in which literary texts exist in a system of relationships with other literary texts past and present. Students will further engage with literary traditions and new directions by considering the following guiding conceptual questions.

• How do literary texts adhere to and deviate from conventions associated with literary forms?

• How do conventions and systems of reference evolve over time?

• In what ways can diverse literary texts share points of similarity?

• How valid is the notion of a “classic” literary text?

• How can literary texts offer multiple perspectives of a single issue, topic or theme?

• In what ways can comparison and interpretation be transformative?

Possible links to TOK

Links to TOK in this area are related to the question of how the interaction of a literary text with other literary texts—brought about explicitly by the author or established by the reader in the act of reception— influences our perception of them and their meaning. Here are examples of links to TOK arising from this area of exploration:

• What kind of knowledge about a literary text and about literature do we gain when we compare and contrast literary texts?

• Does knowledge of conventions of form and literary techniques allow for a better and deeper understanding of a literary text?

• How are judgments made about the literary merit of a text? What makes a literary text better than others?

• Is the study of literature better approached by means of a temporal perspective (grouping texts according to when they were written) or by means of a thematic approach (grouping them according to the theme or concern they share)? What impact does each one of them have on knowledge of the discipline?

• How useful are classifications of literary texts according to form and period? How do they contribute to the understanding of literature and its history?