On Explaining Literary Devices
either Before or After Reading the Text

Looking Back…

The first night in my most recent creative writing class (English 161: Advanced Poetry Writing), the professor dedicated the entire class—all three hours—to an abridged lesson in grammar with a special emphasis on the independent clause. At first, I was a little perplexed as to why we would be spending so much time in an upper-division writing class on things so fundamental. Surely, at this level, we all knew what constitutes a complete sentence and how to punctuate between multiple independent clauses in a single sentence. To my surprise, most of the class was at a loss when it came to commas and coordinating conjunctions, semicolons, colons, and dashes. Then I thought about it: had I not been a writing tutor for the last several semesters, I probably would not have known the concrete differences between those modes either. We began that class making sure that the primary tools with which we would use to express ourselves were well understood by all. Once those tools are acquired and widely used, it becomes easy to take your craft for granted—this is why it’s of paramount importance to discuss the tools of literary discourse both in advance and as they come up in the literature itself.

Looking Now…

For me, the question becomes to what degree should literary students be given a “heads up” when it comes to the rhetorical content of the literature they’re about to read. For example, in English 102 we lately read “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. On the one hand, I wonder if it would have been a good idea to explain the concept of irony before they read the text. On the other hand, this would have risked corrupting the reading experience for the students because, chances are, they would have been so focused on finding examples of irony that the rest of the piece would have sat on the back burner. The next option would have been to discuss the concept of irony as it came up during the discussion in class. The immediate temptation would have been to ask, “Does anybody see the irony with the narrator, being a runaway slave, giving this speech at Pilgrim’s Point?” Now if Alanis Morissette and the mainstream media are any proof, the general population has an inaccurate picture of what irony really is, so this tempting question would come at the risk of assuming that the students—and this goes even for English majors—actually knew what irony as a literary device is. So here I see two extremes with potential risks: On one side, you may explain irony and make the students aware of its presence in the text before they read it at the risk of them reading only for irony; on the other side, you may bring up the concept of irony as it comes up in the text during the class discussion at the risk of the students still not having a clear perception of what irony as a literary device is. The two median solutions are clear: one ought to make sure to thoroughly explain the literary device in question as it comes up in the text thus avoiding the trap of assuming that all of the students know (by giving a silent nod and blank stare) exactly what the device in question is—or, alternatively, plan the rhetorical-side of the discussion ahead of time and frame the discussion by explaining the literary tools after the students have read the text but before they discuss it. I feel that the latter is especially preferable because it gives students an anchor point for discussing the piece using the new literary discourse tools they’ve just been provided in real time.

Looking Ahead…

With my section of Shakespeare and Twelfth Night on the horizon, I foresee some challenges with maintaining this balance of giving a “heads up” and challenging students to see things in “real time.” Given the goals of the syllabus and the limited amount of time we have to cover Shakespeare, I feel like the best option lies with allowing the students to get their feet wet with the first act or two, that way when I frame the discussion with the literary devices that are more specific to plays and Shakespeare, there will be some context in advance. Again, this goes back to the idea of allowing the students to explore the text on their own first then providing a rhetorical framework before the discussion of the actual text comes into play.