Pedagogic Criticism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 1-17

3. Heroic Reading

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 19-51

4. Turning the Screw of Criticism

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 53-82

5. Imaginary Burglars: English Studies and the Hinterlands of Thought

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 83-105

6. The Hidden Aesthetic of English Teaching

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 107-129

7. Pilgrims and Progression

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 131-156

8. Fragments and Ruins: Teaching in the Shadow of Catastrophe

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 157-184

9. Getting Close: Masculinities in Literary Pedagogy

   • Ben Knights

   Pages 185-210

10. Writing as Teachers

    • Ben Knights

    Pages 211-234

11. Afterword

    • Ben Knights

    Pages 235-244

12. Back Matter

    Pages 245-265

    PDF

This book argues that the history of English Studies is embedded in its classroom practice, and its practice in its history. Some of its foundational struggles are still being lived out today. English is characterized as a ‘boundary’ subject, active in dialogue across a number of imagined borders, especially those between academic and non-specialized readerships. While the subject discipline maintains strong pedagogic principles, many of its principles and values are obscure or even invisible to students and potential students. The book cross-fertilizes the study of English as a subject with the analysis of selected literary texts read as pedagogic parables. It concludes with a call for a return to the subject’s pedagogic roots. 

• Literary study
• Academic
• Teaching
• Literary Theory
• Education
• Reading tradition

“Woven from a career of researching and teaching literature, this warm, wise, thought-provoking, profound, subtle and rewarding book should be read and discussed by the whole profession. The book’s quiet but assured originality lies in the braiding together of a challenging genealogy of English as a discipline, a deep understanding of the entwining of criticism and pedagogy, and an astute focus on the threads which bind our singular subject. Gently enacting in prose the production of shared meaning that occurs in teaching, Pedagogic Criticism marks a novel form of theoretical understanding that both grows from and returns to the experience of teaching and learning literature.” (Robert Eaglestone, Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)

• Teesside University , Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

  Ben Knights

Ben Knights is Emeritus Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Teesside University, UK, and a former director of the UK HE English Subject Centre. His research concerns the history and day-to-day practice of English and related subjects. His most recent book was Masculinities in Text and Teaching (edited) (Palgrave). 

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