I liked reading about Blau’s writing assignments for literature classes. Specifically in the second paper that Blau assigns (p.176), I like the idea of giving students the freedom to think honestly about what they read, but still also giving them the security of being able to “cross-check” their interpretation against the readings of more accomplished scholars. Allowing students to (1) come up with their own rough thoughts about the text and its meaning, then (2) having them read “professional” critiques of the text and see where their interpretation intersects with that of the “pros” is a good way, I think, to expose students to multiple interpretations and to illuminate their reading processes.

Then when comparing their interpretation to others’, perhaps they would be able to locate places where their thinking and/or their knowledge disallowed them to come to the same conclusions as the “pros” — that is, they could pinpoint what it is that they were missing as interpreters of literature (prior knowledge, cultural context, experience, &c.). Not that they could do anything about that right away. A person can only read and absorb so much at a time!

In the third paper Blau assigns (p. 180), he de-emphasizes the idea of a thesis, which I think is interesting. He says he does this to allow a kind of blooming of ideas — opening up to different ideas rather than closing them down (by narrowing to a thesis). I have a feeling that this would work well in a rough draft, but unless students were already strong writers, it would likely produce a paper that was hard to read and hard to follow (and maybe a bit incoherent). I think this is where the ideas of reading and writing (and lit. class and comp. class) really intersect in an interesting way. Blau’s assignments seem like they would be great to use in a literature class where the focus was on interpretation, identifying and exploring problems, difficulties, &c., understanding the reading process, and finding meaning in texts. But those same assignments would probably fail miserably in a composition classroom, where cohesion, coherence, and a stable foundation are valued.

So I wonder, does the kind of writing that produces knowledge and skills in a literature course clash with the kind of writing that produces knowledge and skills in a writing course? If so, then that sucks, because now we have another double-bind on our hands.