Sarah presented a paper at an academic conference on the uses of literature, drawing on material from Storylistening and from her forthcoming article, ‘Functional Criticism’, which builds on (but departs in significant ways from) existing work in postcritique. The paper established conflicting views of the value (or not) of literature and literary criticism in the history of the discipline, before presenting Storylistening‘s four functions of stories as integral to teaching literature informed by a functional critical perspective. The goals of such teaching include developing narrative literacy, encouraging interdisciplinarity, and teaching skills in deploying a variety of literary critical methods (including less common ones, such as sociological). The paper argued for the classroom encounter with texts to be one premised upon an open-mindedness essential for the generation of new knowledge. The presentation slides are available below.
