소통과 통합을 위한 문학교육

Abstract

How could literary education contribute to the communication and the integration of our society? In order to answer this question, the first thing we have to do is to examine whether literature itself would be suitable for that purpose or not. Literary education could contribute to the communication, if we use its linguistic property for our students to understand literary texts correctly and critically, to express their thought and feeling effectively and creatively. Furthermore, it could enhance their abilities to comprehend the variety of human lives and cultivate their aesthetic emotion holistically. Next, literary education could serve to promote the integration of our society, if we take advantage of its humanistic and artistic power condignly. Practically speaking, we cannot but apply methodological pluralism. Even though it is accused as a vapid pluralism, it would be better than monism, skepticism, relativism, nihilism, and eclecticism. Whether to teach the conflict like Gerald Graff, or to evaluate the validity of interpretation like E. D. Hirsch, we have to let our students participate in the literary community with full memberships. Literature as a kind of humanities does not pursue analysis without synthesis, description without evaluation, and abstractions without feeling. We must bring the critical awareness to our students who are so naive that easily fall into a certain dogma, and build up their resistance to the irresponsible relativism. The authentic way to get there is to teach literature with communication and integration.