Both Blau and Wilner bring up the question of a little background information (author bio, historical context) as something many teachers find necessary in helping students interpret a literary work.  I believe that this background information leads students away from their own personal interpretation of a story or poem, and therefore almost never provide it.  I used to feel guilty about “gypping” the students out of a little more knowledge, but I don’t anymore.  Once a teacher provides biographical or historical information, students often shift their thinking to fit what they now know.  And that contradicts the idea of making meaning.  In many cases, the background info isn’t much help anyway, but I have seen students try to fit an interpretation to their new knowledge.  For example, Emily Dickinson was a recluse.  Knowing this detail of her personal life may help in appreciating ED, but it is not much help in understanding many of her poems. However, I have had students who try mightily to fit this fact into their reading of her poems.

Wilner talks about the emphasis that thoughtful teachers place on the reader’s emotional connection with a text.  In fact she says this connection “should not be underestimated”.  This is what I am counting on when I select poems and stories (from my anthology) for the class.  By eliminating the “little lesson in geography, history, or politics”, I feel like I leave the learning up to the student.  When Fish said that it is the readers who make the meaning, he meant that they do that through their emotional connection, that empathy or understanding, to the text.  When students can fit the text into what they already know, culturally or academically, then they make that emotional connection and can therefore construct an interpretation that feels authentic to them.

Blau has a nice solution to the problem of background info – and that is to give the students other material written by the same author (88).  Students can then absorb the themes, language, nuances that interest the author, and see connections in a body of work.  By doing this, students can also monitor their progress in understanding, and see their own construction of meaning evolve as they become more familiar with an author.  Blau says that it is not our job “to convince our students that we are in possession of some unattainable knowledge that makes it easy for us to navigate in textual waters”   (95) but rather to help them acquire the knowledge they need by providing them with the texts they’ll need to learn that knowledge for themselves.