Abstract The common approach to the teaching of imaginative literature is designed to maintain what strike one as beings to be a professional necessity: the distinction between the capacities of teacher and scholar to respond to literature.

Abstract

The common approach to the teaching of imaginative literature is designed to maintain what strike one as beings to be a professional necessity: the distinction between the capacities of teacher and scholar to respond to literature. However, the fact must eventually be faced that a work of imaginative literature is not made accessible to anyone according to means of an "explanation" neared after the work is read. Imaginative writings are compos primarily, not to be speculation about or discussed, but to be experienced imaginatively, to be lived vicariously, at the consequence of reading. No teacher may assume that an intellectually enriching "interpretation," however