Literary theory: historical origins, current constructs, derivative approaches and Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation document applications

Knox Lush, Linda (2002) Literary theory: historical origins, current constructs, derivative approaches and Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation document applications. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The herald and harbinger of the new millennium has, most decidedly, been change. Its hand has touched almost all facets of human existence, it being slow, slight and singular in some cases yet rapid, multiple and irrevocable in others. High school curriculum development has also felt its impress as well. The western provinces have recognized and responded to the call for change with the Western Canadian Protocol - Common Curriculum Framework; closer to home the impetus for change in curriculum direction, development, and documents has been answered through the formulation and gradual implementation of the Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation document. It is within the pages of this document that new directions and reconceptualizations take shape that will serve to inform the teaching of English language arts for the new millennium. -- For the most part, this shape and direction has been a theoretical one, specifically that of literary theory. With the explosion of the new continental literary theories and their subsequent graft and maturation, this field has been a decided mover and shaker in not only the realm of the academy but, particularly of late, in the world of high school curriculum development. The philosophies and methodologies of movements and schools such as critical literacy, semiotics, deconstruction, cultural studies, etc. are those that now serve to form some of the key conceptual and structural pillars of the English language arts classroom. The presence, role, and practical application of such theories in current curriculum frameworks, particularly the APEF, necessitate an examination of this theoretical territory and its inherent consciousness in the APEF. It also necessitates a proposal utilizing the integration and synthesis of said theories, resulting ultimately in workable practices for the English language arts classroom; applications borne of, circumscribed by, and adherent to critical literacy and multiple sign systems. -- Critical literacy, itself, is an approach to teaching English language arts that is characterized by eclecticism and dichotomy, and draws its fuel and fire from postmodern theoretical stances. Transactions through multiple sign systems utilizes an application of Gardiner's Multiple Intelligences through Reader-Response Theory, specifically the American development of Rosenblatt termed aesthetic transactive theory. Such reshaping, refashioning, and reconceptualizing, evident in curriculum development, is no less evident within the APEF where its designers have sought and wrought new directions and innovations for the 21st century, theoretically grounded in literary theory. It is also clearly evident that these new directions and shifts embrace the philosophy behind critical literacy and transactions through multiple sign systems. -- It is to such perceived shifts in the accepted order that Thomas Kuhn coined the term paradigm; it is to such shifts that the students of Newfoundland and Labrador will be introduced to a new paradigm under the aegis of the APEF and its inherent literary theories.

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