| Popis: |
In various schools and colleges the thematic approach in advanced courses has met with reasonable success. Readings are centered, for example, on the image of woman, or that of the priest, or that of the gangster. It would seem that a comparable, but less ambitious, type of orientation could be applied in a Level IV or V high school or third year college course. For students in the latter group it can serve as an introduction to the format they will subsequently encounter. In her article, " Teaching Literature in the Secondary Schools," 2 Florence Steiner outlines a course for students of Spanish, focusing on the themes of violence, women and the supernatural. Textbooks are beginning to be published for the thematic approach. One such is Golino and Franck's reader, Tutte le strade portano a Roma,3 which shows how Rome is central to Italian culture. Others are Chinn and Cooper's II paese in collina,4 a reader set in the Abruzzi, and Mankin/Szogyi's Anthologie d'humour frangais.5 Though a study of certain images or themes per se has long found favor in literary criticism, some might frown upon a thematic approach in lower-level courses. They might feel that it is at best an artifice by which to respond to the students' urgent call for relevancy. Yet it is often true that if students feel they are studying about war, poverty, love, or whatever else, and not literature as an end in itself, they expend more of their efforts and attention on their work. Moreover, relevancy has always played a vital role in the rapport between reader and work of literature. What we want, in fact, is to teach our students to place their concern with current issues within the perspective of problems that are eternally relevant. We have chosen the theme of the city for several reasons. It is a theme not quite so widely treated as some of those mentioned above. It is a subject of vast interest to many |
