Two shorter German novels were discussed in the teaching and learning project; about twelve periods were devoted to each. This coincided with the two quarters that made up the semester.
The students had the holiday periods preceding each semester to read the novels.
The texts, Heinrich Boll's Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (in translation: The Lost Honour ofKatharina Blum) and Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser (The Reader), were chosen firstly for their relative brevity and linguistic accessibility to third language speakers. As it turned out the first novel was found to be linguistically rather more difficult than I had expected, but this was balanced to some degree by the availability of many secondary titles and a video film with English sub-titles. The other work was available in English translation, but in the end this was hardly needed since the novel proved to be very accessible
The novels were also chosen for thematic relevance not only with regard to the German situation, - both are very topical and their respective plots rely heavily on relatively recent events in German cultural and political history - but also for possible parallels to our own South African context. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum has yellow journalism and systemic violence as its theme, while The Reader deals with illiteracy and coming to terms with the Nazi past. Thirdly, both are interesting examples of generic structure and function. Finally, the (possible) enjoyment factor was taken into account. Both novels are "good reads" in that they present a suitable mixture of love, lust and violence, have protagonists with whom one can easily empathise and identify (and in the case ofKatharina Blum truly villainous antagonists), and they do not come up with easy solutions to the problems and issues represented.
Students were given a number of other, non-literary texts for further reading and discussion in the course of the semester. These included background material on the political situation in Germany during the 1970's, concerning the Baader-Meinhof gang and their victimization at the hand of the boulevard press once they were arrested, as presented by Boll who was the victim of slanderous accusations himself; excerpts from the principles of the German Press Council regarding journalistic ethics; a short piece written by an author who had uncovered unethical practices in
a particular German newspaper; a few quotations concerning the concept of violence, and Boll's own views about the situation in the 1970's. In the case of The Reader the extra material comprised views on the effects of illiteracy on personal development and the social functioning of an individual, a piece dealing critically with Daniel Goldhagen's Holocaust book, and an article on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which draws parallels to the German efforts of dealing with the Holocaust (such as the Nuremberg Trials). The purpose of this extra material was to situate the particular novels in a larger socio-political context and to aid the exploration of parallels to our own situation, as well as to encourage discussion.
A different set of materials was made up of notes I had prepared on functional grammar (Appendix A), based mainly on Butt & al. (1995) and on workshop materials provided by Polias (2000). The purpose of these was to serve as a general introduction to the grammar so that the students would be able to employ its metalinguistic terms both in textual analysis, and in the interpretive work needed to connect the analysis to the context of situation and culture. The terms used were, where possible, translated by me into German, but for greater clarity the English was made available as well, as students were allowed, should they wish, to carry on discussions and write their assignments in English.
Dealing more specifically with the classroom process, at the beginning of the semester the students were given two documents I had compiled on mainly theoretical and philosophical aspects of literature learning (and to a lesser extent, teaching) (Appendix B). One document deals with learner types, levels of knowledge and quality in learning and teaching, the purpose of which was to make the learners aware of their own learning processes1, and the other dealt with the basic premises of critical hermeneutics pertaining both to the classroom processes and to the interpretation of literary texts. This document included a summary of a discussion we had had in class the previous week, on the reasons for, and functions of literary studies.
Finally, at the beginning of each quarter the students were given an outline of what was to take place in the sessions in order to facilitate preparation. Preparation was crucial for discussion (and not lecturing, although this also took place at certain stages) to take place freely. The outline showed how we were going to proceed as well. After an introduction to the project itself and the assumptions on which it was based, and to the basic concepts of functional grammar, the movement was bottom-up, that is from linguistic details of the text to broader thematic discussions. After the introductory session, then, we moved immediately to the analysis of the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions as expressed by the text. In the case of Katharina Blum we analysed the first (short) chapter in this way in order to arrive at a sense of how the theme of the novel is treated in the narrative. With Der Vorleser we analysed the beginning chapters of each of the three 'books' that make up the novel. This was to show how the
11 had used this document for a previous evaluation project in a classroom situation. In that situation it was effective since the particular outcome I was aiming at was for the students to reflect specifically on their own learning. In this case, there was little follow-up from my side, which does not mean however that students' learning in the literature course was less reflected.
It just means that they did not use the particular terms I had made available to them in the document.
autobiographical narrator developed from an adolescent to a middle-aged man. From these beginnings we tried to tie in the analyses with the larger context of the novels themselves. This was done by discussing the themes and sub-themes of each, moving towards the larger socio- political context that existed beyond the texts. The last periods in each case were spent in discussing and evaluating the novels against the background of non-literary texts dealing with similar problems, and in attempting to gauge their relevance with regard to our own context.
In the course of the semester the students were expected to complete five assignments which together with their journals formed their class mark. The assignments were varied according to specific outcomes. The first three were rather easier (or so I thought, see below) because the novel on which they were based, Katharina Blum, was the more difficult to read. For the first assignment students were expected to write a summary of the novel's plot, after having seen the video. The aim of this exercise was to gauge how well the plot had been understood, and the outcome was correspondingly for the students to demonstrate their ability to abstract relevant information. The second exercise was to analyse the second (short) chapter of the novel with the tools of functional grammar, and to interpret what this text meant in terms of the narrator's reflection on the process of narration. The aim here was to apply the analytic tools to a text and to start connecting the analysis to the larger context of the (complete) novel. The outcome in this case was the demonstration of application skills, since a similar analysis had been done in class already. In addition students were expected to show their grasp of what the text means in terms of the whole novel, that is, that they can, at least in a rudimentary fashion, interpret the text. The third exercise had the aim of situating the novel within the context of the author's body of work.
Students were asked to gather biographical information and information regarding the other works of the author and to make thematic connections to the novel under discussion. They were
thus expected to show that they could abstract information and compare it with different but related data. The comparative simplicity of these exercises - in the sense that they did not require much 'hard-core' literary criticism - was intentional. Their overarching purpose was to motivate students to start reflecting on what is involved in the study of literature as discourse, on two levels, viz. the substantive and the theoretical. The first, substantive, level concerns the actual material, in the specific context, beginning with the 'surface' discourse (the plot), its linguistic realisation in the functional-grammatical detail of language use2, and ending, in this case, in an examination of the author as a situated subject with an agenda, which explains some of the choices made in the particular text. The theoretical level, on the other hand, concerns the discipline of literary studies as a logonomic system, in Hodge's sense (Hodge 1990: 12; see my discussion of this in Chapter 3, especially Footnote 17), though without the expressed intention of critique. The latter was implied, however, in that these assignments were designed to begin a hermeneutic process (see Chapter 2, especially the section on Gadamer); the designated area for explicit critique were the learners' journals (see "Evaluation" below).
The last two assignments (on Der Vorleser) concentrated to a much larger extent on interpretation and criticism. For the first of these students were asked to do an Internet search for reader reviews on Der Vorleser, to pick three of them and to engage with them critically. They were also asked to find evidence in the novel itself for the views expressed in the reader reviews, and for their own views. The aim of this exercise was for the students to engage with other opinions and to provide a foundation for their own views, while trying to understand how those
2 In structuralist terms, 'surface discourse' applies to the linguistic realisation and not to plot; the latter would be labeled 'deep structure'. My own usage of the terms obviously does not accord with the vocabulary of Structuralism, but indicates rather a movement from less to more detailed examination of a text.
other views may have arisen. The intended outcome here was both empathy, critical reflection on own opinions, and the ability to express both the opinions and their criticism. The last exercise was a traditional critical essay, the topic of which, however, the students could choose themselves. The intention here was to allow the students the pursuit of their own interests and to do some independent research. The outcomes were a demonstration of independent, critical thought and the ability to articulate this. In addition they were required to show that they have
information gathering and referencing skills. - It is clear, then, that these exercises focused on the more traditional tasks of literary studies, viz. the critical engagement with texts along with the use of secondary sources. However, because the students were given free choice of topic for their final assignment, the equally traditional power relations on which the discipline of literary studies rests - those of the teacher/lecturer deciding which topics are worth serious academic discussion, and which not, and thereby in effect already offering an implicitly authoritative interpretation - were defused, to an extent.