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This book redefines the nature of textual difficulty in literature and shows the implications of the new definition for teachers at all levels of education. Contrary to the traditional use of grade levels or readability formulae, the authors redefine difficulty in terms of readers and the texts they meet. They base their arguments on contemporary linguistic theory, on historical and comparative studies of criticism, on literary theory about readers and texts, on post-Freudian psychology, on empirical research concerning the nature of reading literature, and on studies of classrooms, curricula, and testing. What emerges is a coherent work that builds a case for seeing difficulty in literature as a human phenomenon more than a textual one.
"I like the fact that this collection revolves around a single phenomenon, but examines that phenomenon from a range of different disciplinary perspectives — literary criticism, cognitive psychology, linguistics, educational research, post-structuralist criticism, etc. This text should be useful in addressing a central ambiguity in secondary and college literature instruction — the conflict between the need to provide 'appealing/relevant' texts and the need to intellectually challenge students." — Richard Beach, University of Minnesota
Introduction
Alan C. Purves
PART I. DIFFICULTY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
1. Sources of Difficulty in the Processing of Written Language
Wallace Chafe
2. The Difficulty of Difficulty
Hazard Adams
3. Literary Theory and the Notion of Difficulty
William Touponce
4. The Difficulty of Reading
Helen Regeiro Elam
PART II. DIFFICULTY IN PRACTICE AND THEORY
5. Kinds of Understanding, Kinds of Difficulties in the Reading of Literature
Gunnar Hansson
6. Questions of Difficulty in Literary Reading
Susan Hynds
7. Making it Hard: Curriculum and Instruction as Factors in the Difficulty of Literature
Martin Nystrand
8. Indeterminate Texts, Responsive Readers, and the Idea of Difficulty in Literature
Alan C. Purves
Contributors
Name Index