Since Feeling Is First:

Since Feeling Is First:
Serious Play in the English Classroom
since feeling is first
he who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you. . . .
(E. E. Cummings)
Dr Natasha Mayne
Brisbane Girls Grammar School
nmayne@bggs.qld.edu.au

“Emotion and feeling lie at the heart of our
capacity to experience meaning.”
(Johnson 2007, p. 53)
The aesthetic is foundational to narrative
and to subject English.

Defining the Aesthetic
―The term refers not in the first place to art, but, as the
Greek aisthesis would suggest to the whole region of
perception and sensation.‖
(Eagleton 1991, p. 13)
It is ―the study of everything that goes into the human
capacity to make and experience meaning.‖
(Johnson 2007, p. x)
The aesthetic is a way of knowing.

The aesthetic:
a definition for the English
classroom
The aesthetic encompasses a wide range of emotional and critical responses
to texts; indeed, the affective and the intellectual are considered to be
intrinsically linked.
It is far more than that which is simply “beautiful” in a text.
It is ideology that we feel.

Aesthetic Textual Features
Aesthetic textual features refer to those aspects of
texts which prompt critical and emotional reactions.
As such, the aesthetic is closely tied to reader and
audience positioning.

Windows into Other Worlds:
Why the aesthetic is so important
―Classrooms don’t just produce assessable
products, they are also the sites where students’
subjectivities are shaped and re-shaped.‖
(Morgan & Misson 2006, p. 210)

Aesthetic activities for
the English classroom
Real Reflection
Jack Thomson’s Reading Journal prompts:
•What did you bring to the reading of the novel that influenced/ helped/ hindered your
reading
•What would you have liked to have in your repertoire that would have helped you to read it
better
This was further broken down into the following response/repertoire categories:
Personal experience;
•Cultural knowledge;
•Literary knowledge, general: how fiction works;
•Literary knowledge, specific: how any particular texts you’ve read helped
you to read this one;
•Your beliefs or ideology.
(Thomson 2009, p. 268

Aesthetic activities for
the English classroom
Ask…
This is what I found out from my Year 12 students when I asked them the following questions
at the start of an elective novel unit:
Ways that studying novels at school can diminish your enjoyment of literature:
•Reducing a book to a couple of themes/ideas when you know that there is so much more to
the novel;
•Analysis can kill emotional engagement;
•Analysis can diminish imaginative engagement—feel you’ve solved the main mysteries of the
novel, nothing left for your imagination to do;
•Being forced to read something doesn’t set you up for enjoying novels;
•Your ideas are ultimately assessed.
Ways that studying novels at school can increase your enjoyment of literature:
•Get valuable contextual info
•Sense that other people enjoy the same things as you
•Might discover novels that you wouldn’t read ordinarily
•Learn more about very important issues

Aesthetic activities for
the English classroom
They asked for…
•a Book Club session for the first 10 minutes of the first
lesson of every week
•textual intervention activities—they said they enjoyed
writing from different characters’ points-of-view
•opportunities to reflect on their own responses to the novel

Aesthetic activities for
the English classroom
contd
•Student generated questions/ themes/ lines of inquiry
•Gripping Moments
Students were invited to share with the class a section of the
novel that had moved them in some way.
Some students chose the same sections as other students to comment
upon, but they generally had slightly different interpretations and
experiences of these textual moments.

Aesthetic activities for
the English classroom:
Embodied Enactment
Feel It!
•Enactment: Embodied Semantics
link to The Searchers script/ acting activity used in my Yr 10 Western Elective Film unit.
Students are divided into groups and each group is given a scene. Groups have to determine how to
block the scene and deliver lines etc. They present (act out their scene) at the end of the lesson and
explain why they made the choices they did.
Later in the unit, they will continue working in their groups to storyboard their scene (a great way to learn
and apply knowledge of film techniques) which they then edit it into a mock animated Western scene
using PhotoShop and MovieMaker.

Sensory Maps: What do you see, touch, taste, smell, feel (emotionally)
when you read this poem (student led activity using eBoard)

•Digital Stories and vlogs
Aesthetic activities for
the English classroom
Digital Design
See it
•Page to Screen: Storyboards and Mini Movies.
•Examples 1 –click through PPt slides (Mr March becomes smitten with Marmee) and
2 (Mr March’s attempts to teach the plantation slaves to read and write—a crime—are
discovered)
In these activities, groups were given a scene from the novel March (our
class study novel for term III 2008) and were asked to storyboard their
scene and then edit it in PhotoShop and MovieMaker. This activity was
conducted after assessment at the end of term and helped to prepare
girls for their elective film unit in the following term.
•Example 3 is the Western storyboarding activity referred to earlier.

Stanza to Screen:
If your poem were to be filmed, what would we
see,
hear,
feel

The Australian Curriculum
Some Concerns
Many of the delegates at the ACARA Literature
Course feedback workshop called for revisions to
be made to the curriculum to more appropriately
reflect an holistic approach to texts and the
teaching of English.

The Australian Curriculum
Some Concerns
Meaning is created in texts through an interplay of all four of
the unit dimensions: language, texts and contexts;
representations; intertextuality: perspectives, and more to
boot!
The problem with a compartmentalised approach to texts:
It is impossible, for example, to consider how
representations work in texts without also considering the
impact of language, texts and contexts, intertextuality and
perspectives etc at the same time. Likewise, (Lit) Unit 1’s
focus on identifying, explaining and analysing nuances,
allusions, paradoxes and ambiguities in texts is impossible
to achieve by looking at language and context alone.

The Australian Curriculum and the Aesthetic
There is some promising stuff in the draft curriculum; but, just as textual
meaning is dependent on the complex interplay of many things, so too aesthetic
engagement is dependent on a complex interplay of personal, experiential and
textual elements.
The aesthetic needs to be treated here in a more
coherent and holistic manner as it is foundational to
all that we do in English.

Works Consulted
• ACARA (2009). The Shape of the Australian Curriculum.
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Home
• - - -. (2010). Draft K-12 Australian Curriculum in English.
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Home
• Arnold, R. & Hughes, J. (2009). “Empathy, Imagination and
Creativity in English and Drama” in Manuel et al (2009), pp. 195-
207.
• Brock, P. (2009). “The Value of Literature and Language in
Contemporary Education: A Personal Perspective” in Manuel et al
(2009), pp. 23-40.
• Campbell, R. (2009). “Evaluation of the English senior syllabus
(2008) in open trial 2009 and 2010.” Interim Report submitted to the
Queensland Studies Authority, October 2009.

Works Consulted contd
• Eagleton, T. (1991). The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Massachusetts:
Basil Blackwell Inc.
• Gleeson, L. (2009). “Imagination, Innovation, Creativity: Re-Visioning
English in Education” in Manuel et al (2009), pp. 139-144.
• Iacobini, M. (2008). Mirroring People: The New Science of How We
Connect With Others. NY: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
• Johnson, M. (2007). The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human
Understanding. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
• Locke, T. (2009). “The Disappearance of Enjoyment: How Literature
Went Wandering in the Literacy Woods and Got Lost” in Manuel et
al (2009), pp. 123-138.
• Manuel, J. (2009). “ „The Best Moments:‟ Adolescents‟ Reading
Practices and Preferences” in Manuel et al (2009), pp. 99-122.
• Manuel, J. Brock, P., Carter, D. & Sawyer, W. (eds) (2009).
Imagination, Innovation, Creativity: Re-Visioning English in Education.
NSW, Australia: Phoenix Education Pty Ltd.

Works Consulted contd
• Marshall, B. (2009). “Goals or Horizons The Conundrum of Progression in
English or a Possible Way of Understanding Formative Assessment in the
English Classroom” in Manuel et al (2009), pp. 279-290.
• Misson, R. and Morgan, W. (2006). Critical Literacy and the Aesthetic:
Transforming the English Classroom. Illinois: National Council of
Teachers of English.
• Morgan, W. (2007). “Beyond gaps and silences: strategies for „doing‟ a
critical aesthetic.” Words’Worth Vol 40, No 4, 16-21.
• - - -. (2008). “Accounting for the Aesthetic.” Words’Worth Vol 41, No 1,
54-57.
• Oatley, K. (2008). Interview with scientist by Ramona Koval, Australian
Broadcasting Corporation The Book Show radio program, 4 July
2008.
• ---. (2008). “The Science of Fiction: a good novel is far more than
entertainment.” New Scientist 28 June, pp. 42-3.

Works Consulted contd
• Pope, R. (1995). Textual intervention: Critical and creative strategies for
literary studies. London: Routledge.
• Sawyer, W. (2009). “Language and Literature: Revisiting Some
Definining Moments in the History of English” in Manuel et al (2009), pp.
71-86.
• Thomson, J. (1987). Understanding Teenagers’ Reading: Reading
Processes and the Teaching of Literature. Sydney: Methuen; London:
Croom Helm; NY: Nichols.
• - - -. (2009). “Texts, Repertoires and Reading Journals: How Knowing
What They Know Helps Readers Read” in Manuel et al (2009), pp. 261-
277.
• Woolfe, S. (2007). The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: a writer looks at
creativity and neuroscience. WA: UWA P.