Literary studies rant

One of my classes is English Literary Studies, and it keeps bothering me. The professor isn't the best, but that's not really the problem - the problem for me is the way they tell us to look at technical things concerning literature, such as POV or narrator.

I identify as both writer and reader, but the classes and the book we use obviously is written for people who never in their life have written an English prose text or would ever consider to do so or - God forbid! - think about how it's done. They are just supposed to look at the end product.

What the teachers don't seem to get or don't want to teach the students is that writing is a craft. I know you shouldn't look at authorial intent, but if you want to understand basic stuff, like unreliable narrators or figural narrative, why not just tell the students, "Look, there is a guy, and he has a story and he wants to write it down. There are people in that story and stuff happens to them and they have feelings about that. Now the writer has to pick a way to tell that story - does he want the reader to know everything important that's happening at all times and what everybody thinks about it, so that there are never any questions or any uncertainty, or does he want to tell it in a way that shows us how one particular person in that story experiences what happens, at the cost of not being able to tell us what everyone else thinks or what happens to them while the perspective person (= focalizer) isn't around?" I mean, wouldn't that be easier to understand for people?

I guess my problem is that I can never sit in a class and not think about how it could be taught better. Maybe becoming a teacher wasn't such a bad choice after all.

Literary studies rant

One of my classes is English Literary Studies, and it keeps bothering me. The professor isn't the best, but that's not really the problem - the problem for me is the way they tell us to look at technical things concerning literature, such as POV or narrator.

I identify as both writer and reader, but the classes and the book we use obviously is written for people who never in their life have written an English prose text or would ever consider to do so or - God forbid! - think about how it's done. They are just supposed to look at the end product.

What the teachers don't seem to get or don't want to teach the students is that writing is a craft. I know you shouldn't look at authorial intent, but if you want to understand basic stuff, like unreliable narrators or figural narrative, why not just tell the students, "Look, there is a guy, and he has a story and he wants to write it down. There are people in that story and stuff happens to them and they have feelings about that. Now the writer has to pick a way to tell that story - does he want the reader to know everything important that's happening at all times and what everybody thinks about it, so that there are never any questions or any uncertainty, or does he want to tell it in a way that shows us how one particular person in that story experiences what happens, at the cost of not being able to tell us what everyone else thinks or what happens to them while the perspective person (= focalizer) isn't around?" I mean, wouldn't that be easier to understand for people?

I guess my problem is that I can never sit in a class and not think about how it could be taught better. Maybe becoming a teacher wasn't such a bad choice after all.