Affective and Cognitive Responses to Poetry in the University Classroom

Abstract

In universities, as in mainstream education more widely, cognitive approaches to poetry are often dominant. Far from being irrelevant to the serious study of literature, we argue that eliciting students’ affective responses to poetry can deepen their cognitive understanding and analytical skills. Drawing on recent research in psychology on the relationship between cognition and affect, we show that poetry has particular potential to make us aware of the crucial interrelation of our cognitive and affective processes; and that bringing those responses into balance can deepen our understanding of poetry. Building on recent educational studies of typical student (and teacher) anxieties and assumptions about working with poetry, and on our observations from our own initial, exploratory seminars, we explore some of the obstacles to rebalancing the cognitive and affective dimensions of poetry in higher education, and point to the potential value of such an approach if such obstacles are overcome.

Keywords:

• Teaching poetry
• cognition and affect
• poetry seminar
• poetry and emotion
• higher education

Notes

1. See also LaCroix’s (2005) book Inspired English: Raising Test Scores and Writing Effectiveness Through Poetry and Fiction, which promotes the study of literature as a tool for developing critical thinking.

2. New Criticism was also supported by later, reactionary criticism that responded to the perceived permissiveness of youth culture, e.g. Don Gutteridge’s ‘The Affective Fallacy and the Student’s Response to Poetry’ (1972), which argues against drawing on affective and subjective response in the classroom.

3. For further evidence see Ofsted’s Moving English Forward: Action to Raise Standards in English (Department of Education and Office for Standards in Education 2012 ), which suggests a similar problem at GCSE level.

4. See Eva-Wood (2008) for a further example of an approach to teaching poetry that values emotional and personal development in its own right.

5. For more on The Reader and their ‘Shared Reading Model’, see http://www.thereader.org.uk/.