Literature & Pedagogy

Building upon the approach to reading literature pioneered by Bruce Gardiner at the University of Sydney for over four decades, Literature and Pedagogy is devoted to the way that texts – literary texts in particular – seek to instruct us.

Bruce Gardiner has inspired generations of teachers and scholars in the field of literary criticism. He stands for a scholarly ethos which is at risk of disappearing. His distinctive academic career, which was entirely devoted to research-led teaching, invites us to think about the relationships between literary studies and pedagogy. It also invites us to ask what role a unique pedagogical style plays in the evolution of a discipline.

This collection explores these questions, while also documenting Gardiner’s methods of scholarly as much as professional resistance to the neo-liberalisation and neo-conservatism of contemporary academic culture. Contributors draw from inspiring encounters with him to reflect upon the rhetoric and motifs of pedagogy within literary works. They put Gardiner’s mode of reading into practice by offering new interpretations of pedagogical mechanisms employed within important literary works, from the seventeenth century to the present, and of cultural phenomena, like colonial interpretations of the Australian lyrebird’s song. The volume also offers pieces inspired by Gardiner, such as poetry, art, translation and creative non-fiction, as well as three unpublished lectures by Gardiner himself.

Techniques and methodologies of literary education are traditionally believed to offer students the keys with which to unlock the secrets of texts and foster their appreciation. Literature and Pedagogy offers a new perspective, showing teachers and students of both education and literature how literary works present their own methods for reflecting critically upon how and why we learn, read and teach.