Lecture's Paratexts. Teaching Literature with the Use of Visual Culture
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Rychter Ewa Lecture's Paratexts. Teaching Literature with the Use of Visual Culture.pdf (960.76 KB)
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2014
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Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Abstract
The article discusses the ways visual culture (i.e., painting, sculpture, architecture, manuscript illumination, photography, etc.), presented at the beginning of literature and literary theory lectures, may help strike a balance between information-oriented teaching and a more aesthetic approach to the lecture-room experience. Drawing on Gerard Genette's concept of paratexts (verbal and non-verbal phenomena surrounding the literary text itself), I argue that the opening slide in the multimedia lecture, in which elements of visual culture are employed, partakes of the paratextuality of book titles and book covers and has both a designating, informative function as well as an aesthetic and “tempting” one. In the course of my argument, I evoke examples of my literal, metonymic-synecdochic, metaphoric and ironic paratextual slides to show how an academic lecture may try to integrate the explicit communication of ideas with a more indirect, creative, aesthetic learning experience.
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Rychter, Ewa. “Lecture's Paratexts. Teaching Literature with the Use of Visual Culture.” Cross-Curricular Dimensions of Language Learning and Teaching. Ed. Marek Krawiec, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. 161-175.